Al-Qaeda's Growing Online Offensive

andy1307 brings us a story from the Washington Post about al-Qaeda's technological capabilities and the methods they use to protect themselves and their networks from opposing military forces. Quoting: "US and European intelligence officials attribute the al-Qaeda propaganda boom in part to the network's ability to establish a secure base in the ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan. Analysts said that as-Sahab (AQ's propaganda network) is outfitted with some of the best technology available. Editors and producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops and top-end video cameras. Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software that is also used by intelligence agencies around the world. [Al-Fajr, a propaganda distribution network] is heavily decentralized, with its webmasters generally unaware of one another's true identities for security reasons, intelligence analysts said. It also has separate 'brigades' devoted to hacking, multimedia, cybersecurity and distribution."

Comments

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[something_wicked_thi]

It's from a reputable source. Besides, there's nothing really strange about this. The idea of using PGP and decentralized servers makes perfect sense. The dubious bit is that warning lights go off in my head every time someone mentions Al-Qaeda because usually it's someone trying to scare me for political reasons.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[canUbeleiveIT]

Yawn. Proof please. Next.

Proof for what? That they're producing propaganda? Do you really doubt that?

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[jfsimard79]

I agree, proof please. It seems they want to scare the sheeple...ZOMGZORGZ you might die ... soonish.

Aw, c'mon.

[leoofborg]

Why *wouldn't* AQ have all this stuff? We pay $$$$$ to the house of sa'ud, some of that money makes it to Pakistan. We outsource and train people in that region of the world and expose them to the best tech we have here. Why wouldn't *some* of them have a hobby? The next thing the Washington Post fearmonkeys will tell us is they use PEX bittorrent, SSH, and twofish crypto. And they embed marching orders in Flash and Postscript files. [yawn] Next!!

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

It's not like they're underdeveloped countries. All Arabian countries do have an IT industry, and there's plenty of IT graduates as well. Also, some of these countries make lots of money on oil-related stuff. There's plenty of people who've become rich enough to afford just about any type of technology. "Organizations" like Al-Quaeda make money by fundraising. Many Islamic people with an extremist mindset are happy to make donations, because they want to break free from the "evil West" (which they see as being ruled by the Pope and the Jews, no kidding!!). I've known some of those folks. They seemed to have a very bizarre view of the world. So I guess, they'd have no trouble finding supporters, just like Western conspiracy theorists.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

As a Muslim, I'm calling you on that one.

After having lived in Saudi Arabia for a year (admittedly 14 years ago, but I doubt the view has changed hugely since then) I can tell you that the primary gripe the population have there is the U.S. propping up an unpopular monarchy that is mismanaging and/or stealing the country's wealth. The U.S. could make friends of the Saudi people by simply telling the Saudi government that they're on their own. Then the Saudi royal family would need to either make the people happy, or prepare to be overthrown as soon as the last shipment of U.S. supplied weapons started rusting.

I don't know *anyone* (with the possible exception of that crazy lunatic in charge of Iran, who is about as representative of Iranians as the Saudi royals are of the Saudi people) who thinks the West is some evil regime that needs to be toppled. Heck, I live in a Western country quite happily. I've traveled extensively to Middle eastern countries and (remember I'm Muslim, with Muslim friends and relative and we all travel to Muslim countries, so I'm not pulling this out my backside) it's utter BS that Muslims have some kind of chip on their shoulder with regards to the West. The problem is Western interference in Muslim countries' politics, and that primarily is the propping up of the Saudi government. I think I can speak for the majority of Muslims when I say that Muslims don't like the Saudi government. They call themselves "custodians of Islam", yet they are a corrupt, self-serving bunch of monarchical fascists.

Oh, and we don't need the U.S. to come in and "liberate" the place. Just butting out will do the trick. They'll save the hundreds of millions spent on military support and they'll make friends of the majority of the Arabian peninsula to boot. Bargain!

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[LilGuy]

Not quite sure where you got your information from, but AFAIK they don't go knocking door to door to get donations. Illicit activities provide the cash cow they need to survive including drug running and arms trading.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Jellybob]

You forgot selling pirated videos. Remember, BitTorrent supports terroists - always make sure you buy genuine DVDs.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[budgenator]

You do realize that the hand-full of raving maniacs,
that make up the Islamic terrorist movement is all most Americans and Europeans see of Muslims? I do agree it time to say to both the Saudis and the Israelis you've had 60 years to get your shit together the gravy train is coming to a stop.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[budgenator]

oh no, no need for bittorrent, you can pick up new first release DVDs of major studio movies for a buck or two at any bazaar in Iraq. MPAA should send in their own troops just to control piracy and bootlegging

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

"Your limited personal experiences are a drop in the ocean..."
It's a far bigger drop than the one most westerners base their views on. I don't see how people can quite happily believe that Fox News lies about the dangers from music piracy and hackers, yet completely swallow without question the FUD regarding Islam in the face of absolutely zero evidence that can be observed in real life.

"But many others don't (such as Muslim immigrants in Europe)."
Your point? There are plenty of Westerners living in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, former USSR states, South America etc who get all uppity and angry about problems they see with the place they are living compared to what they're used to back home.

"Oh, right. Well, I guess we'd better just ignore all those millions of people who hate the West, since you're here to assure us that everything is okay."
Actually, I think my point was that those millions don't hate "The West", they hate western governments propping up local tinpot dictators like the Saudis.

"Concessions and friendly gestures do not work, they are simply a sign of weakness and submission.
Great. Law of the jungle, might is right. Lets all stand up and beat our chests like a bunch of primordial apes, lest the Other Side think we're weak.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[rhizome]

(with the possible exception of that crazy lunatic in charge of Iran, who is about as representative of Iranians as the Saudi royals are of the Saudi people)

Which crazy lunatic are you talking about?

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Anonymous Coward]

So Ron Paul was right after all. If we just BUTT OUT of the world militarily and politically, ...and stop pulling tigers tails everywhere we find them, ...and stop leaving our military everywhere ...and stop promising to be in Iraq for another 100 years... and stop building military bases and a US Embassy bigger than the VATICAN... then maybe with a few years gone by after all that... maybe then we could trade and have commerce and live peaceably in the world.

ahh but WAR IS THE HEALTH OF THE STATE, profitable for government that it is, there will be no chance of that...

American Dollars are less than worthless right now- "Barclays Capital has advised clients to batten down the hatches for a worldwide financial storm, warning that the US Federal Reserve has allowed the inflation genie out of the bottle and let its credibility fall "below zero". - Telegraph.co.uk

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[mikael]

The problem seems to be that one half of the Saudi seems to secretly fund terrorist organisations (or at least their frontline charities) and the other half of the royal offers to provide intelligence reports on the other half if they are provided with Western technology (defence contracts). Both of these are threated with cancellation if their are any investigations into corruption.

Then, just as it looks like Britain could end the dependency on Far East for energy supplies the British prime minister goes over to the oil sheikhs and offers to give them a monopoly on future British nuclear power stations if they would be as kind as to invest in nuclear power in the UK.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[urcreepyneighbor]

or prepare to be overthrown as soon as the last shipment of U.S. supplied weapons started rusting.

Uh. Psst. They could produce them domestically.

I don't know *anyone* (with the possible exception of that crazy lunatic in charge of Iran,

President Ahmadinejad isn't crazy. That's the problem.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

I don't know *anyone* (with the possible exception of that crazy lunatic in charge of Iran, who is about as representative of Iranians as the Saudi royals are of the Saudi people) who thinks the West is some evil regime that needs to be toppled. Heck, I live in a Western country quite happily. I've traveled extensively to Middle eastern countries and (remember I'm Muslim, with Muslim friends and relative and we all travel to Muslim countries, so I'm not pulling this out my backside) it's utter BS that Muslims have some kind of chip on their shoulder with regards to the West. The problem is Western interference in Muslim countries' politics, and that primarily is the propping up of the Saudi government.

Well, it's nice that you've never met any right-wing extremists that also happened to be Muslims. I've known some people (especially from Morocco) who claimed that Iran is their hero nation, and that they thought the Pope and the Jews were ruling the Western world. Perhaps they were only kidding me, but normally, after many such experiences, I could join the choir of people who claim that Islam caters to extremism. (I know they were not allowed to, but they still allowed me to read their version of the Koran for a while, and boy, it was much different from the friendly version I read at submission.org; how many versions of the Koran exist?) -- It's just because I believe the diverse nature of human beings, that I refuse to believe that all Muslims are extremists. And posts like yours truly lift my spirits! Because it means there are indeed people who do not think like that. :-)

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

Not quite sure where you got your information from, but AFAIK they don't go knocking door to door to get donations. Illicit activities provide the cash cow they need to survive including drug running and arms trading.

They run fundraising websites. It's as simple as that. A couple of years ago, here in Germany, some folks were arrested for operating such a site that raised funds directly for Al-Quaeda. I'm sure there's many more of them, here in Germany, and around the globe.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

It's obvious to me now that you a) have a chip on your shoulder with regards to Muslims (irony in its purest form) and b) know very few or perhaps even none. There are no other explanations for how you can both be so far from reality and so adamant in your view.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[tukang]

the primary gripe the population have there is the U.S. propping up an unpopular monarchy that is mismanaging and/or stealing the country's wealth

I agree with your post but it's not only support of the Saud government that upsets many middle easterners - it's also support of Israel - and I think if the US was at least a little more fair and impartial it would go a long way towards improving its image in the mideast because many there believe (and rightly so IMHO) that the US enables Israel to commit human rights violations by supplying them with weapons and protecting them from critical UN resolutions.

Take the UN vote on the security barrier for example. The barrier was voted as illegal by 150 nations and only 6 nations - Israel, US, Australia, Micronesia, Palau, and Marshal Islands - voted against it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3912487.stm

The US is regularly the lone vetoer of UN resolutions critical of Israel and has used 8 of its last 10 vetoes to prevent criticism against Israel - in total 36 out of 77.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2828985.stm

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

What role do the Mullahs play in Iran's government?

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

FYI: The Koran is the most widely memorized book ever. There is only one version, the original of which is in Arabic and has been translated to many languages. To my knowledge, there is no reputable printing of it in any language without the original Arabic side by side with the translated text. Such is the concern with keeping the message accurate and unchanged. The original Arabic is actually poetry with a highly coherent syntax, which makes obvious any attempt to modify it. Furthermore, given the massive number of people who know the book by heart, any altered version of it would immediately be noticed and pointed out.

Belief in the Koran as it is, is a core tenet of Islamic belief, and changing it or any of the other 4 core tenets (or "pillars") results in a different religion entirely. Just because a sect calls themselves "Muslims" doesn't make it so any more than Scientology calling itself a "Church" makes them a valid member of the family of Christendom. It is an illegitimate and unwelcome adoption of the word, and those who decide to change the Koran or use it for their own purposes really should stop calling themselves Muslims and come up with some new name for their religion. The guys at www.submission.org is one such group. They really aren't as friendly as you may think.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

You do realize that the hand-full of raving maniacs, that make up the Islamic terrorist movement is all most Americans and Europeans see of Muslims?

Indeed, they come to our countries for political asylum, because they're terrorists that are not wanted in their own country! ;-)

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

Muslim immigrants in Europe aggressively oppose the very societies they live in and seek to destroy or warp them. They have zero respect for the laws, customs and values of the native population, and actively work to subvert them.

Some of them, certainly. Indeed, I've met such people (especially from Morocco and a few other Islamic African nations).

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

know very few or perhaps even none

There are many Islamic groupings which follow different goals. Here in Germany, Mr Schaeuble set up an Islamic council that tries to resolve the issues between groups, so that Islam can be taught at schools. I've indeed known some extremists who were Muslims (from Morocco and other Islamic African countries). They hated all of Europe and the USA ... and thought the Pope would rule the entire Christian world, and that the Jews would have major influence in Western politics and that we'd just be their puppets. I'm glad to hear it's the exception rather than the norm ...

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

So, is there an English or German translation of the true Koran? One that you would approve of? I'd like to read it in its intended form.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Solandri]

After having lived in Saudi Arabia for a year (admittedly 14 years ago, but I doubt the view has changed hugely since then) I can tell you that the primary gripe the population have there is the U.S. propping up an unpopular monarchy that is mismanaging and/or stealing the country's wealth. The U.S. could make friends of the Saudi people by simply telling the Saudi government that they're on their own. Then the Saudi royal family would need to either make the people happy, or prepare to be overthrown as soon as the last shipment of U.S. supplied weapons started rusting.

It's never that simple. I'm not trying to excuse the terrible things the U.S. has done (or is doing). But part of the problem is people's unrealistic expectations of the U.S.. You say the Saudi people blame (some of) their problems on the U.S. for propping up the current Saudi government. The Cuban people blame their problems on the U.S. for refusing to have any contact (political or economic) with their government. It can't be both, which is it? Many people who are mad at the U.S. for meddling with the internal affairs of certain countries (e.g. Iraq), also get mad at the U.S. for not meddling with the internal affairs of other countries (e.g. Sudan).

In order to exist, any nation must advance policies which are advantageous to itself. It is irrational and unrealistic to expect otherwise. A country which regularly advances policies disadvantageous to itself, or wastes resources chasing policies which provide it no advantage, will soon cease to exist. In other words, you cannot judge another's actions based on what you would like them to do. You must judge them based on what you would do if you were in their place. Or put another way, you can't fault someone for doing what they want to do instead of doing what you want them to do.

The U.S. is heavily dependent on petroleum imports to drive its economy. It is unrealistic to expect it to unilaterally stop seeking friendly relations with the largest petroleum-producing country in the world. Sucks, but that's just the way it currently is. As long as the Saudi government manages to not offend the moral sensibilities of U.S. citizens too much, that government will continue to have U.S. support. If the Saudi people do not like their current government, they need to vote / rebel / whatever and replace it. If that new government does not offend the moral sensibilities of U.S. citizens too much, it too will enjoy U.S. support. In fact, if the rebels advocate a socio-political structure similar to a Western democracy, I'm pretty sure you'll find that the U.S. and other Western nations will do what they can politically to protect those rebels from the current Saudi government.

I'd also like to suggest that perhaps your assessment of what is best for the Saudi people is wrong. You seem to have concluded that if the Saudi government has no external support, it will collapse thus allowing the Saudi people to replace it with something better. This runs counter to current Western political thinking. Governments which collapse on their own tend to send their country into a downward spiral of civil war, mass refugee exodus, and increasingly despotic dictators. Modern Western nations seem to have decided the best way to effect progressive change in other countries is to improve their economic conditions. If it works, eventually enough of that money filters through to the regular populace that they have enough economic clout to demand progressive change (they end up controlling enough of the country's economy that the government can't wantonly jail everyone espousing change). If it doesn't work, the populace gets outraged enough at the economic disparity to rebel and overthrow their current government. Either way, the government changes.

Anyhow, I don't know if the above methods are in fact the best methods, just that Western nations currently seem to th

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Angostura]

Even with a single text, I presume that there are still cases where either individual words or phrases can have differently nuanced meanings. Such nuances lead to differences of opinion about what a particular passage really means, and before you know it, two groups, with conflicting interpretations, both claiming theirs as the divine truth

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[twistedcubic]

It's obvious to me now that you a) have a chip on your shoulder with regards to Muslims (irony in its purest form) and b) know very few or perhaps even none.

a) Of course I do, but how is that ironic? b) There are over one billion Muslims in the world. What does it matter if you personally know a couple of them? Also, what would you say if I stated that most Muslims are violent thugs because I know a few Muslims who are violent thugs?

But you don't know any, do you? And that's the point. Ignorance.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

Dependency on oil is bad.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[turbidostato]

" they want to break free from the "evil West" (which they see as being ruled by the Pope and the Jews, no kidding!!)"

Ah, poor ignorants! Bush talks directly to God Himself, not with lower minions, no kidding.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[abstract daddy]

You're deliberately missing the point because you know I'm right.

Also, I don't remember saying that I support the imaginary "US rampage all over the middle east."

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

I'm not in a position to approve or disapprove of anything, as the guys who translate it know far more about it than I. I don't even speak Arabic. That being said, the most widely respected translations into English that I know of are those by Yusuf Ali and Pickthall. Google can turn up their full texts quite easily.

http://www.islam101.com/quran/yusufAli/
http://www.ishwar.com/islam/holy_quran_(pickthall)/

I like to read with two translations open at once, just to clarify contextual use of words and things like that. Hope that helps!

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

Not quite as true with an Arabic text as that may be with English. You see, Arabic, unlike English, bases its words on context and semantics, making it difficult for a word or phrase to be ambiguous to the extent that it is possible in English. The best analogy I can think of would be comparing strongly typed and weakly typed programming languages. There's less room for ambiguity, which means a speaker needs to exercise more discipline when speaking and use a more verbose syntax. This is (I've heard, I am not an Aramaic linguist by a long shot) not true of the "modern" Arabic dialects as spoken in places like Egypt and Lebanon, as these have evolved to allow greater syntactic flexibility (read: poor grammar).

On a side note, I would like to learn classical Arabic, as syntactic flexibility is, in my books, an excuse to mix up things like "there" and "their" as well as disregard proper rules of grammar. Anyone familiar with online forums should know exactly what I'm talking about.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[MrNaz]

"In order to exist, any nation must advance policies which are advantageous to itself. It is irrational and unrealistic to expect otherwise."

Well, if that's the view, how on Earth can you get all bent out of shape when, say, Iran thinks that it is in their own interest to have a nuclear weapons program? Remember, if we're all going to just do "whats in our own interests", then geopolitics will (sorry, already has) degenerate into a gigantic chess game played by a few powerful men, with the 6 billion other people in the world being pawns.

Sorry, I don't buy it. It maybe the way things *are*, but it sure as hell isn't the way things *ought* to be. We, the people of the world, should not empower the few to play games with our lives, liberties and labor.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Lord Flipper]

After having lived in Saudi Arabia for a year (admittedly 14 years ago... snip... uninformed bullshit... snip... blah blah blah..., etc

14 years. Right. The 'crazy' guy you refer to, does not 'run' Iran. The President there is more of a figurehead. Double-check your CIA factbook. Oh, and I'm glad the Saudi's aren't anti-West or down on USA otherwise it would have been them hijacking the planes into NYC... oh wait.

I've known Iranians for 40 years. I met a shitload of sons and daughters of Iranian military people (officers, not grunts). Their dads had fled Iran when the CIA's 'choice' to run the country (a real nutcase known as the Shah of Iran) was finally ousted. And guess what, they were fucking done, over, dogfood, as far as the regular citizens of Iran were concerned, too.

Last but not least, given your total lack of a grip on the situation, guess which country was the first to offer tangible military and intelligence aid following the bombing of the World Trade Center? That's right, stupid, Iran.

And if you don't think a Life of Islam is morally superior to the westernized version of 'Life' that the West has degenerated into, then I have a simple question: Exactly what version of a Muslim are you? Not a religious or spiritual one, right? So, what... a 'cultural' Muslim. What's that? Muslim 'when it suits you'?

I'm not a Muslim, but several of my best friends are. And two of them were heads of the most highly-regarded departments of Islamic Studies, in the world, (highly-regarded by Muslims, not university ranking bullshit) those being Toronto and McGill (McGill is ranked highest, and Harvard dukes it out with TO for #2). That makes me no expert, of course, but these people, and the Muslims I've known for forty years, are singing a far different tune than you. Why is that I wonder? Perhaps because they live Islamic lives. Try it, then do some contemporary study, then get back to us.

So, there's the door, and don't forget to kiss my fucking ass on your way back to Riyadh.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

Thank you! :-)

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[flnca]

Ah, poor ignorants! Bush talks directly to God Himself, not with lower minions, no kidding.

LOL!!

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Angostura]

Interesting, and yet the very fact that there are quite heated debates over the true meaning of passages in the Koran (over here in the UK it is a fairly common occurrence to see debates between Islamic scholars on TV) suggests that ambiguity still exists. The old classic example is the debate over the meaning of 'jihad' which crops up from time to time.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Shakrai]

Would you not be cheering if US executed some communist/whatever spies that spied against you and your country and trying to hurt you from within?

No, I wouldn't be cheering. And there's a bit of a difference between a Government doing it after all due process was accorded to the accused and a group of militants doing it in public with the intent of scaring the local population.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Shakrai]

If we just BUTT OUT of the world militarily and politically

Refresh my memory: What happened the last time we tried isolationism as a foreign policy?

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Shakrai]

because many there believe (and rightly so IMHO) that the US enables Israel to commit human rights violations by supplying them with weapons and protecting them from critical UN resolutions

Many in the US believe that elements of the Muslim world would be all to happy to push Israel back into the ocean if they had the chance. How many wars of aggression have been launched against Israel?

Take the UN vote on the security barrier for example. The barrier was voted as illegal by 150 nations and only 6 nations

If you want Americans to take the UN seriously then stand up and speak out against those that use the General Assembly as a forum for their not-so-thinly veiled antisemitism. If you want us to take the UN seriously then let's start making the member nations actually live up to the ideals of the UN -- starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

If I was an Israeli I wouldn't give a shit about the rest of World thinking the security barrier was illegal. All I'd care about is whether or not it would reduce the number of suicide bombings in my country. I admire your ideals but I wonder how long they'd survive if you ran the risk of being blown up every time you went out for pizza or groceries.

The US is regularly the lone vetoer of UN resolutions critical of Israel and has used 8 of its last 10 vetoes to prevent criticism against Israel - in total 36 out of 77.

And China and Russia are regularly the sole countries that prevent the UN from taking meaningful action on any number of issues (starting with Iran's flagrant violations of the NPT and the ongoing genocide in Sudan) -- so what's your point? That nations look out after their own (perceived or actual) interests instead of living up the ideals of the UN charter?

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[ashfaqt]

Agreed on most of the post.

However, not all Muslims are Arabs

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[SenseiLeNoir]

Although I am not a muslim, I do have some friends who are. And what you said really does ring a bell. From what I read of the Koran, from official translations, the koran itself seems very straightforward, however, my friends believe that there are some mis-translations which give gains to those who are not very nice, even though they claim to represent the Koran.

My friends say that while the Koran (properly and professionally translated) is good, they do have some misgivings about the hadiths and the suras, specifically that they can be open to huige variances of interpretation, and feel that they represent a time past.

Do you agree with that? I am just curious.

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

They are charging money for bitorrent downloads now?

Re:Aw, c'mon.

[rtechie]

How many wars of aggression have been launched against Israel?

Zero. Arab attempts to reclaim territory seized by Western invaders in 1948 is not "aggression". As the invader, it is incumbent upon Israel to reach reasonable peace settlements with other nations in the region by compensating them for seized territory, transferred population, etc. Example: Israel make peace with Egypt only when Israel returned seized territory, agreed to pay restitution, and arraigned aid from the USA. There is little reason to believe similar deals would not work with the rest of Israel's neighbors, and such deals have been offered. Israel prefers the path of belligerence, threatening their neighbors with nuclear attack and terrorism.

Evil hackers (yawn)

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I can't imagine that it's THAT hard to create a fairly distributed network of "propaganda" outlets with most of the key people using encryption, small laptops, mobile communications....you know, stuff that most folks on this site do every day. And most of us aren't internationally wanted fugitives.

Bullshit

[brxndxn]

This is just more made-up generalized bullshit to get the easily-influenced people to go with more government spending on counteracting the nonexistent problem of terrorism. When was the last time terrorism was in your back yard? When did it affect you personally? How often is it happening?

And.. if it did affect you, chances are that your back yard is in Iraq..

The government keeps pushing 'Our enemy is huge, organized, centralized, and powerful' but we are seeing more and more than 'Our enemy is a disorganized populace tired of what the US is doing.'

It's like we're building a tank to try to destroy a wasp.. while the wasp keeps stinging everyone because we're sitting by its nest.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few thousand dead people from a few years back who, if they could be asked, would tell you that it's hardly a 'non-existant' problem. Is it being used to scare people for political reasons? Sure, just like most issues are bent to manipulate the sheeple. Is it real? Yes. Will they kill you if they can? Sure.

The world isn't black and white, all or nothing.

Re:Bullshit

[brxndxn]

At what point do we stop using the events on 9/11 as a blanket excuse for government to drive itself all over the backs of the American people? Yes, we should be reasonably vigilant against terrorism - but we should never give up a single bit of our rights!

We, the people, have to pay over $1trillion for the 'war on terrorism' using the 9/11 excuse.. Yet, there's little to no progress made for combating illegal immigration - while illegal immigrants are killing more Americans than died on 9/11 every year..

This is a sick fucked up system.. where our companies that directly benefit from wars also run our media.. who build up our screwed-up politicians.. who systematically screw America into oblivion. It's time we quit believing every goddamn 'trrrist' story and start seeing through the bullshit. Am I afraid of a terrorist coming after me or my family? fuck no.. Am I afraid of our out-of-control government? absolutely - look at history

Re:Bullshit

[Curtman]

There are a few thousand dead people from a few years back who, if they could be asked, would tell you that it's hardly a 'non-existant' problem.

There's also a few hundred thousand dead people in another part of the world who would tell you to put things into perspective and realize which is the greater tragedy.

Re:Bullshit

[ichigo 2.0]

i'd be ignorant to think i wasn't still in someones target and would hope my goverment was trying to prevent that.

You want the government who caused you to become a target to now prevent you from becoming a target?

Re:Bullshit

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

And.. if it did affect you, chances are that your back yard is in Iraq.. ... or new york (twice) ... or in london (twice) ... or in madrid ... or in barcelona ... or amsterdam ... or paris ... or ...

Or, merely this week :

6/28/2008 (Khyber, Pakistan) - A sectarian disagreement leaves eight dead.
6/28/2008 (Tripoli, Lebanon) - Shia terrorists detonate a bomb in an apartment building, killing two residents.
6/27/2008 (Pattani, Thailand) - A 64-year-old man is murdered by Islamic gunmen.
6/27/2008 (Narathiwat, Thailand) - A 36-year-old civilian is shot to death by Mujahid after dropping his children off at school.
6/27/2008 (Jijel, Algeria) - Six security personnel are taken out by al-Qaeda gunmen.
6/27/2008 (Vedeno, Chechnya) - Four police are ambushed and killed by Jihad fighters.

This week alone there have been 173 dead bodies due to terrorism (in the name of a certain religion). Denying the problem is as stupid as saying it affects everyone.

America is free of terror because it only has a tiny amount of muslims.

If you worship a massacring terrorist like mohamed, that apparently causes a tendency to randomly kill. Especially if you believe "all muslims are slaves of allah, their orders are to kill for islam" (quran 9:111, and this specifies explicitly that it is to be interpreted literally)

Re:Bullshit

[Znork]

There are a few thousand dead people from a few years back

And since then, as many people have died in bathtub related accidents.

it's hardly a 'non-existant' problem.

Indeed. Neither are bathtubs. Almost 300 people die every year in bathtubs. Both terrorism and bathtub related fatalities are serious issues that need to have appropriate levels of funding.

Will they kill you if they can?

If any terrorists wanted to kill Americans they'd be selling oil to Americans. That would nail about 50K citizens every year, 20 times more efficient than blowing up random things.

The world isn't black and white

And in a greyscale world, 'terrorist killings' merit about the same level of attention as bathtub safety.

Re:Bullshit

[hacker]

There's also a few hundred thousand dead people in another part of the world who would tell you to put things into perspective and realize which is the greater tragedy.

You mean Darfur? Sudan? Some other place where the US has not provoked those deaths intentionally, to solidify its presence?

More people should familiarize themselves with Operation Northwoods and look at the date posted on that article, as well as the date of the original intent of those ideas.

Re:Bullshit

[brxndxn]

Hrm.. Pakistan, Lebanon, Thailand, Algeria, Chechnya.. none of those are my back yard. Let them do as they please - we need to leave them alone. They'll fight it out.

And, the 'tiny' amount of muslims in the US still amount to millions - and they're pretty damn peaceful here. I don't see anything wrong with them.

Re:Bullshit

[abstract daddy]

This is just more made-up generalized bullshit to get the easily-influenced people to go with more government spending on counteracting the nonexistent problem of terrorism. When was the last time terrorism was in your back yard? When did it affect you personally? How often is it happening?

Terrorists are caught all the time in the US and elsewhere in the Western world. I also wouldn't say the 9/11, Madrid and London attacks constitute a "nonexistent" problem. Outside the Western world, Islamic terrorism is a much bigger problem, with many people dying on a daily basis. Since 9/11, there have been over 10,000 attacks all over the world (that's a low estimate). There are many problems that don't directly affect me, but that doesn't mean they aren't problems. I don't suffer from poverty, hunger or disease, but obviously a lot of other people do.

And.. if it did affect you, chances are that your back yard is in Iraq..

Or in Thailand, Lebanon, Algeria, Chechnya, Pakistan, Somalia, Israel, Bangladesh, India... Islamic terrorism is a bit more widespread than you think.

The government keeps pushing 'Our enemy is huge, organized, centralized, and powerful' but we are seeing more and more than 'Our enemy is a disorganized populace tired of what the US is doing.'

Both are true. There are many organizations and networks, but there are also people who act on their own initiative. The terrorists aren't "tired of what the US is doing," they're Jihadists. They're fighting a holy war against infidels and heretics, a holy war that has been more or less in progress for the past 1600 years. The amount of Islamic terrorism occuring in or against the US is a drop in the ocean, unless you count Afghanistan and Iraq.

Re:Bullshit

[Koiu Lpoi]

America is free of terror because it only has a tiny amount of muslims.

So, is it reasonable to assume from your comment that you believe Islam is the source of terrorism? So, all we have to do is eliminate Islam, and the world will be safe? There wouldn't be any reason they're doing these things, just that they're Muslim? What about the peaceful Muslims? What about the terror acts not carried out in the name of Allah?

Re:Bullshit

[Koiu Lpoi]

I think he was referring to our subsequent invasion of other middle eastern countries on false premises.

Re:Bullshit

[imipak]

while illegal immigrants are killing more Americans than died on 9/11 every year.

[ CITATION NEEDED ]

Re:Bullshit

[Xabraxas]

Right.... no chip on their shoulder. that would be why the Sept 11 bombers were Germans and Swedes? Wake up. There is a problem in the middle east and that problem is ISLAM.

As for as I know Timothy McVeigh isn't a Muslim but that didn't stop him from blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City. You're naive to think terrorists are soley Muslim.

Islam = Evil is an entirely over simplistic view of the world.

Re:Bullshit

[Richard W.M. Jones]

This is a sick fucked up system.. where our companies that directly benefit from wars also run our media..

So that explains what CmdrTaco is getting up to when he should be proof-reading Slashdot stories. Running a global defense corporation :-)

Rich.

Re:Bullshit

[budgenator]

You do realize that the United States is bordered by four countries, Canada, Mexico, Russia and Cuba; two of those countries conspired to bury the US in nuclear bombs. The Military is tasked with having plans for every possible contingency and being able to provide the civilian Government with the requested plans and implement on short notice. Just because a plan exists doesn't mean anyone is championing its implementation.

Re:Bullshit

[oldhack]

It'd be fitting to see some fundy freak insist on promoting their religious (or whatever) freedom IN YOUR HOUSE. You'd both deserve each other. "They hate us because we are free" YUCK.

Re:Bullshit

[nomadic]

Because when the government's stand on women's rights, or Israel's right to exist, the freedom of religion as well as the freedom from religion, and the promotion of economic prosperity makes me a target

And what happens when it's the government's propping up of despots who brutalize their own people, or supplying biological weapons to those despots (then 20 years later invading that country for possessing biological weapons)?

There are some things a free man shouldn't back down from under the threat of violence, even when that violence becomes a reality. When he does, he no longer is free.

Okaaay...are you actually asserting that you, personally, are showing any amount of personal courage by taking this viewpoint?

Re:Bullshit

[ichigo 2.0]

*pats sumdumass's head*

Now there's a good Patriot. Now go outside and play, daddy will bring you Freedom Fries later.

Re:Bullshit

[extrasolar]

1. The Sept 11 bombers were Muslim. (Using an outsider's definition, not getting what a real Muslim is just like I don't take pains to define a real Christian.)
2. Anyone who bombed the US in the Sept 11 attacks hate the West.
3. Therefore, all Muslims hate the West. Invalid

Damn, guy, get yourself a couple of logic and critical thinking books before you start calling bullshit. Don't be stupid.

Re:Bullshit

[samkass]

[citation needed]

All of what you say is completely false and actually undermines legitimate disagreement with the current US administration. Al Qaeda ("The Base" in arabic) exists, and is fairly clearly delineated from other terrorist organizations. It's true that sometimes the Bush administration makes tenuous claims regarding Al Qaeda collaboration (eg Saddam Hussein pre-9/11), but they pretty clearly don't lump all terrorists in with Al Qaeda. Hamas, Hezbollah, FARC, whatever... there's plenty to go around. Osama Bin Laden tapes have actually been verified as much as possible by plenty of video experts, but these days nothing can ever be proven "beyond any doubt" when it comes to media dispatches.

Re:Bullshit

[b4upoo]

There is a certain importance in making clear to the world that any nation or party that attacks the US will receive a very painful and disproportionate response. Or plainly said if you punch me in the nose I will rip off your legs and beat you and maybe even your entire family into a pulp. It's called war.

Re:Bullshit

[Money for Nothin']

You're naive to think terrorists are soley Muslim.

And you're naive to think that terrorists attacking the U.S. are not, predominantly -- though certainly not solely -- Muslim, and therefore, the probability that the next terrorist attack will be by a Muslim will be higher than for a non-Muslim -- and that finally, therefore, that we ought to focus our anti-terrorist attention on Muslims.

You'll have diversity and counter-examples and exceptions in any sufficiently-large population of data. That's not the point; no rational person cares about that.

The point is prioritization: the point is to deal with the cases whose expected value (probability * cost) are the greatest. And to-date, the evidence suggests that Muslims tend to both attack more-frequently and cause the most damage. We can't ignore the occasional crazy white Christian guy, but it's clear he's less-likely to cause a problem domestically than his Muslim and/or Arab counterparts...

(The same argument above could be inverted and used in an Arab or Muslim nation: a WASP from Britain or the U.S. is more-likely to violate their religiously-derived laws than a local...)

Re:Bullshit

[I confirm I'm not a]

Just out of curiousity, how many Arab or Muslim nations actually have religiously-derived laws? I lived in the Sultanate of Oman for 9 years in the 80s, and the laws there seemed to owe more to Civil Law than Sharia. Female Police Officers carried guns and patrolled un-chaperoned; Non-Muslims could buy alcohol; I wore swimming trunks at the beach; Theft resulted in a prison sentence, not loss of a hand. Oman was/is by no means the most liberal Arab nation (and certainly not the most liberal Muslim nation).

Most crime was carried out by the underclass (low-wage Arabs and Asian construction workers), not Western expatriates.

Re:Bullshit

[dave420]

So we should go and kill all the sharks, lions, and tigers, as they've all killed a bunch of people (more than thousands). They're real. They'll kill you if they can.

There has to be something more to the logic than that for it to not be ridiculous.

Re:Bullshit

[Raenex]

That plan was evil, and should never have even been drafted, let alone approved by the military and brought to the Secretary of Defense. The people who proposed it should have been brought up on treason charges.

Re:Bullshit

[novakyu]

Yet, there's little to no progress made for combating illegal immigration - while illegal immigrants are killing more Americans than died on 9/11 every year..

Are you talking about the group of people from the south (and sometimes north or even overseas) who are practically holding up America's economy with their willingness to work long and hard hours for nothing more than peanuts?

I daresay if it weren't for them, the lazy Americans (who keep complaining about "losing jobs" like crybabies) who couldn't do the same job well enough wouldn't be able to collect their welfare checks weekly.

Re:Bullshit

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

So, all we have to do is eliminate Islam, and the world will be safe? There wouldn't be any reason they're doing these things, just that they're Muslim? What about the peaceful Muslims? What about the terror acts not carried out in the name of Allah?

Islam has long since died. It died at the hand of British soldiers and a Turkish homosexual in 1923, and it's last hope died in Paris a few years later.

What we're seeing today has little to do with islam as it was practiced in the 19th century, or any time before that.

What about the peaceful Muslims?

Ok so let's define muslim. Muslim is someone who, unquestionably, believes the text of the quran, the quran who specifies it is meant literally (quran 3:7) and promises hellfire for anyone who even tries to "add symbolic meanings". A verse that is read most often at the execution of baha'i or ahmadi muslims in islamic nations.

So this "believing muslim" is a person who literally (see quran 3:7) believes he is a slave with orders to "fight and kill", coming straight from allah (quran 9:111). (fighting is to continue until there are only believers left)

He is someone who believes there "must always be war" (quran 2:213). That "women are less than men" and that if a woman, whether muslim or non-muslim, is tought to question any of it she is to be ignored if possible, locked up if she doesn't immediately ceased and beaten if she continues with her questioning ...

That there can't be human rights at all.

How, exactly, can one be at peace with anyone who believes that is the ultimate, everlasting, authority ? Except by dieing I mean.

This is a theoretical question : given someone who believes these type of things are the ultimate authority, how can one (even a muslim) be at peace with him/her ?

So if you're answer is going to come down to "but muslims don't believe in the quran", then please stop before you start. That's what I mean by "islam died in 1923 at the hands of British soldiers". And they killed islam for VERY good reasons. (see for example the negotiation that Thomas Jefferson conducted with islam)

Today's movement is trying to violently re-establish a dead corpse. The only question is how many must die before they give up. It appears the answer is "a lot".

Islam, or the english translation of that arabic word, "repression", is not a religion like Christianity. Islam dictates how you wipe your ass, and threatens to kill anyone who does differently. (in case you're wondering, muslims have to wipe their ass using 9 stones and only their left hand).

It is not a personal religion, it is not about behaving well. It is about FORCING others (without violence if possible, with violence if necessary) to behave islamic ("hisbah"). It is not a personal faith, and if practiced in this way it means nothing. It is, in essence a racist religion that is based on forcing people to accept their superiority based on nothing. You know, like nazism was.

As the founder of islam says : "islam will be victorious because of terror".

Another one of his statements "you love life and we love death and that's why we will win", real eloquent guy there.

So, all we have to do is eliminate Islam, and the world will be safe?

As we've clearly established, the large majority (over 99%) of terror acts are comitted by muslims, because they're muslims. Obviously the world will not become disneyworld because this racist semi-islamic ideology dies. But it *will* become a hell of a lot nicer and safer.

The roads don't become safe because you fix your brakes. It is nevertheless a good thing to do, because it makes them safer.

Re:Bullshit

[Curtman]

Now all we need is someone to keep them honest.

Re:Bullshit

[SenseiLeNoir]

No religion says to be nice to other religions.

Need to correct you there, most Dharhmic (Hinduism, Siekhism, Jainism, Bhuddism) religions actually DO say to be nice to people in other religions, each in their own way. In hinduism (my own) it says: "The truth is one, though different sages may describe it different" Statign that all religions are a path to the same destination, and should be respected.

Also Hinduism frowns upon conversions, though supports and encourages, learning and adapting. Its not an exclusive religion, but rather inclusive. This is a very different mindset to Abrahamic religions, and may even be alien to some.

Re:Bullshit

[brxndxn]

Us lazy Americans work the highest average hours per week and have the highest productivity per worker in the world. Us lazy Americans pay taxes for our bloated government - for roads.. and medical care..

Illegal immigrants do NOT pay taxes - certainly at least not like we do - and they are getting free infrastructure and medical care that us lazy Americans are paying for.. For a lot of Americans, if you took the $taxes away from the $Peanuts + $taxes they get paid, they'd be left with the same $Peanuts or fewer than illegal immigrants get paid..

Further, you are implying that merely by working hard and getting paid little, us lazy Americans get our welfare checks paid for by illegal immigrants? What the hell do you have against forcing illegals to become citizens like the rest of us? If we document them, we can tax them too.

The 'little guy' in America is made smaller because illegal immigrants undercut wages with their 'no tax' advantage.

Re:Bullshit

[helpfulcorn]

Come off it, many documents like that exist in the past. Besides the fact that it was written by a single person as a suggestion, and therefore can hardly be proof of anything other than a single general is a fucking nut. The "Operation Northwoods" thing is oversimplified to show that somehow the government was ready to take us all out, mostly for conspiracy theorists. I seem to remember a time to go into Cuba, hell even an excuse to exchange nuclear missiles with Russia (actually several times). Where was the evil government that wanted to kill everyone then? In bunkers ready to press buttons? No, they were trying to prevent problems. Stop spreading bullshit, you're turning the Internet into a bastion of mediocrity.

Re:Bullshit

[turgid]

If you worship a massacring terrorist like mohamed, that apparently causes a tendency to randomly kill.

People worship things. That's just human nature. mohamed is no more a massacring terrorist that jesus, jehovah, jaweh, krsna, budda, L Ron Hubbard or anyone else.

As with all human pursuits, it's the humans involved that are the problem.

Here in the UK we have millions of "mohamed-worshipers" who are perfectly reasonable, peaceful, friendly and functioning members of society.

"Islam" is not the problem, "religion," even, is not the problem. These things stem from Human Nature. Human Nature can not be eradicated, and Human Nature is The Problem.

The sooner we realise this, the sooner we can start to deal with it, the sooner the better.

Pointing the finger and blaming certain sections of society (or sections of the Human Race) i.e. racism will not solve the problem.

Re:Bullshit

[novakyu]

Us lazy Americans work the highest average hours per week and have the highest productivity per worker in the world.

Oh, you mean the 60 standard work-hour per week that all Americans work.

Bzzz! Only "go-getters" work that much, and frankly, those people are not at danger of losing their job to someone simply willing to work for lower wages. In other countries, the standard workweek is longer than 40 hours (I've seen 48 hour, basically one Saturday out of a month, and some countries take only one holiday per week).

Illegal immigrants do NOT pay taxes - certainly at least not like we do - and they are getting free infrastructure and medical care that us lazy Americans are paying for..

MEDICAL CARE? You mean the universal health care that Hillary Clinton got through the congress almost a decade ago? Oh wait. Never mind. In this timeline, that never happened---undocumented aliens have to pay for their medical costs out of pocket. State does not pay for their medical care. If we are really talking about how we should allocate our limited resources, we should be advocating for euthanasia of elderly people so that we don't blow off all our money on Medicare and a bunch of stuff that doesn't increase our GDP.

Frankly, I have no sympathy for the "little guy" at all. If your job can be done by someone who's simply willing to work for a lower wage than you are, then you have no business holding that job away from someone else. And if your job can be automated and done by a machine, you have no business wasting earth's resources.

P.S. Oh, and please, if you are really worried about "little guy", guess what---little guys don't really pay tax anyways. There are things called "standard deductions", and little guys shouldn't make too much above those deductions. Heck, they might even get "tax credit", as socialists like to call welfare handouts. With all those taken into account, undocumented aliens actually pay more tax than your typical "little guy"---in form of sales tax, which is vital to your local government and economy, whereas income tax only benefits the federal government, about which I couldn't care less. (And actually, depending on their employer, even if the undocumented alien is unable to pay their portion of tax themselves (mainly because the federal government won't let them, without endangering their livelihood), the employer might pay the payroll tax anyways.)

P.S.

If we document them, we can tax them too.

I am all for more permissive immigration laws (or rescinding all such restrictions altogether). What I am not for is tighter control of borders or demonization of the hard-working undocumented aliens who are already here.

Re:Bullshit

[craagz]

but selling oil wouldn't have the impact that a terrorist attack would aim for. That of "Terror".

on the other hand, are you trying to imply that bathtub makers are terrorist?

Re:Bullshit

[Xabraxas]

And you're naive to think that terrorists attacking the U.S. are not, predominantly -- though certainly not solely -- Muslim, and therefore, the probability that the next terrorist attack will be by a Muslim will be higher than for a non-Muslim -- and that finally, therefore, that we ought to focus our anti-terrorist attention on Muslims.

I can only seem to recall one terrorist attack on US soil in recent memory that apparently involved Muslims and that was 9/11. To make a jump from some radical Muslims are terrorists to all of Islam is evil is quite a leap and says more about racial and religious bias than anything else.

Re:Bullshit

[Money for Nothin']

You misread my paragraph; re-read it. Where do I say that all of Islam is evil? I said that the probability that the next attack will be from a Muslim is higher because previous attacks were by Muslims -- it's a question of filtering. Most Muslims, if the more-stringent filter were designed correctly, would pass through without incident. But the fact that more attacks have been by Muslims than not implies a practical need for more filtering/scrutiny of Muslims than people of other religions -- particularly since the violence is driven in part by religion.

Some examples of Muslim terrorist attacks on U.S. targets. Notable among them:

1) 9/11
2) 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya
3) 1998 USS Cole attack
4) 1993 WTC bombing
5) 1988 Pan Am flight 103

Re:Bullshit

[Xabraxas]

I guess you just missed the point. Declaring Islam as the problem itself shows a lack of understanding of Islam, the Middle East, and religion in general.

Re:Bullshit

[Money for Nothin']

When you have a religion that promotes spreading its word, by the sword if necessary, you have a problematic religion. Period. And Islam does that.

So does Christianity (not explicitly, but by way of other rationalizations than "for my god").

So would other religions (save Jainism, at least, but including Atheism), if they were big enough to be a significant force.

Religion itself is nothing less than a mental disease; Islam is but one variant of it (but a particularly violent one, in recent decades).

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[canUbeleiveIT]

I agree, proof please. It seems they want to scare the sheeple...ZOMGZORGZ you might die ... soonish.

Again, what do you want proof for? That they would produce propaganda or that they're taking security measures? Or what? Of course, there will be people that will want to use this to create undue alarm, but I just can't figure out what you and the parent are skeptical of and need proof for.

the boogie man will get you

[petes_PoV]

What this article boils down to is that the analysts (whose job it is to talk up any threat) reckon there's a guy up a mountain 10,000 miles away with a laptop and a video camera. He's downloaded some free software to encrypt his emails and that's a "propaganda boom".

Now I realise it's the government's role to instill fear, uncertainty and doubt in the population but, if that's all they've got then I reckon we're all pretty safe.

Re:the boogie man will get you

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

And this is coming from a government that can't even catch organized gangs spamming and selling prescription drugs online....presumably where it is a LOT easier to follow the money trail.

Nothing to see here.

Re:the boogie man will get you

[Threni]

> And this is coming from a government that can't even catch organized gangs spamming and selling prescription drugs online....presumably
> where it is a LOT easier to follow the money trail.

And..uh..the same government who created/were responsible for the rise of groups like Al-Queda in the first place through its policy of arming/training fundamentalists in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Re:the boogie man will get you

[dbIII]

And..uh..the same government who created/were responsible for the rise of groups like Al-Queda in the first place

Although some incredibly stupid things were done especially regarding Afganistan it wasn't quite as stupid as that. It was mostly Saudi extremists behind the start of it although they were also our allies in an earlier gulf war against Iran.

Reagan's attempt to restart the cold war for whatever weird reasons he had certainly sent a lot of money to dubious groups in Afganistan but they were already set up. Some people from those groups may have ended up in Al-Queda when it was set up a bit over a decade ago but the connection is very tenous.

Re:the boogie man will get you

[Curtman]

Not to mention it's the same government who thinks it can still win "the war on drugs" using a strategy that makes drugs more profitable.

Re:the boogie man will get you

[leoofborg]

Oh noes. Now we know where all those OLPCs went.

MeshNet in the mountains of Pakistan.

That's 9-11 times ten times ten times ten.

Let's round up Negroponte as a 'person of interest' and hold him without cause for 6 years, shall we?

Sorry Nicolas....

[smirk tags=on]

Re:the boogie man will get you

[leoofborg]

Um, I think you're a little loose on the timeline there.. Reagan was trying to END the cold war by economically breaking the Russians.

The Russians occupied Afghanistan, and the only faction with the 'fight' was the Mujahdeen. [some of whom became the Taliban].

So yes, unused weapons have a LONG shelf life, and yes, the Taliban undoubtedly retained what we sent over there [like Stinger missiles used to shoot down Russian Mil-Hind gunships].

If you really need a perspective on this, Adam Curtis's _The Power of Nightmares_ covers the rise of extremist Islam and the Neo-Cons quite nicely... You should be able to download the video series from Archive.org.

The last thing I have to say is that our [USA] politicians are in LOVE with the 'North African' strategy [from WW II] wherein if we take the fight 'over there' then they percieve, and maybe rightly so, that we won't have a fight 'over here'.

I'm not sure they want to sweat the minor details of personal liberties, censorship, or the economy. They're probably too busy for that.

Re:the boogie man will get you

[iminplaya]

Now I realise it's the government's role to instill fear, uncertainty and doubt in the population but, if that's all they've got then I reckon we're all pretty safe.

Not from the drunk driving, tailgating, brainwashed population that votes our rights away we aren't. Yes, I'm looking at you, people. You, who vote for the party politician because he promises you an extra bag of groceries next year, or the assurance that you'll never, ever see Janet's titties again. We must stand firm against pornography. If it takes an iron fist, well...

Re:the boogie man will get you

[Pictish Prince]

So they maybe should have seen that there was a problem and stopped supporting them. Instead, Clinton brought them into former Yugoslavia en masse to help wreck that place.

Re:the boogie man will get you

[dbIII]

The Taliban is also a far more recent thing. They are what you have when the kids that grew up in the brutal refugee camps come home and run an entire country like a brutal refugee camp. There were also many factions in Afganistan in the 1980s.

As for the other bit, it's fashionable to hero worship Reagan now that he is dead but the cold war ended despite his efforts to restart it.

Don't miss the point.

[myCopyWrong]

The tech is interesting but besides the bigger point:

How has one man in a cave managed to outcommunicate the world's greatest communication society?

He's winning because censorship always backfires. The censored party, no matter how wrong, gains an air of truth. The technology used to carry the message does not matter. Attacks on Al-Jazeera and websites were a terrible mistakes almost as bad as invading Iraq, torturing captives and legal immunity for contractors. We have acted as badly as our supposed Islamo-Fascist enemy and our talk about democracy, freedom of press and human dignity rings hollow.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

He's winning because censorship always backfires.

No, he's winning because it WORKS. Are you seriously claiming the west censors the muslims more than the muslims censor the west ?

I'll just post a link to how "the economist" looks in a muslim nation :

http://jturn.qem.se/2006/more-pictures-of-iranian-censorship/

Terror works, and so does censorship. Using violence to advance a political position works. So what went wrong in the beginning in Iraq ? To little agressiveness on the american side. This whole rules of engagement thing.

Al-qaeda on the other hand, placed bombs in a girls pre-school and detonated the bombs when american soldiers brought back a lost girl. 28 of the children died and both soldiers (and the girl they protected) survived.

And somehow the western press means by "proportionalism" that the US should be less agressive, imagine. The Iraqis know perfectly well how muslims fight : kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them en masse in hopes of demoralizing an enemy, have been normal features of muslim conquests everywhere.

All indigenous cultures of northern africa have been totally obliterated by islam : from the ancient egyptians (who still existed when the muslim caliph ordered the library of alexandria burnt down), to the pseudo-roman carthagens, to berbers and tons of other cultures.

Terrorism works. Sooner or later other people will start catching up to this message.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[myCopyWrong]

Are you seriously claiming the west censors the muslims more than the muslims censor the west ?

I don't know what you mean by "the west" or by "muslims." The concepts are distractions used to justify things which are wrong. If we look down on censorship we must not practice it ourselves.

When agents of the US government censor, torture and otherwise violate the US Constitution, enemies of the US can claim hypocrisy. The US must act better to be perceived as better. Principles are more important than "proportion". Conquest, censorship, torture and other lawless behavior is immoral and a losing strategy. Anyone can can point to it and say, "See here what US democracy, free trade, tolerance and liberty are all about."

Re:Don't miss the point.

[hjrnunes]

Terrorism works huh? No shit? Everybody knows that. What's new is the fact that this new democratic-free-speech-politically-correct ruling mentality in the US and Europe that wants to convince us that it doesn't and that it's evil. Yet you look back in History and you see all kinds of terrorists being praised. Example: Menachem Begin, orchestrator of the bloodiest terrorist attack of the 20th century in King David Hotel in Jerusalem, with a death toll of around 90 people, men women and children both Jew and Muslim. Yet he became Prime-Minister and, here's the funny part, won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Hilarious. Now, who are you and the rest of the blindfolded puppets that share your opinion trying to fool? Apart from yourselves of course...

how muslims fight : kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them en masse in hopes of demoralizing an enemy

Hiroshima/Nagasaki anyone?

the ancient egyptians (who still existed when the muslim caliph ordered the library of alexandria burnt down)

Yeah. That's what you say. Others say otherwise. Besides, the attack on science is not a muslim thing. It's a religious thing.

So you can crawl back to your hole again and stay there until you figure out how to properly make a point instead of swinging flawed biased pseudo-arguments around. Oh and while you're there, remove the blindfold and read a couple of things. History books are advisable though read more than one author. Books written in the last and before last centuries are also advisable (There were not any neocons back then, only imperialists).

Re:Don't miss the point.

[billcopc]

Thugs are thugs.

Terrorists are thugs with brains.

They plan their attacks. They calculate the victim's reactions, not the immediate body count. A terrorist's first goal is to control, murder is simply the means to an end.

Education does not prevent terrorism, it actually helps people become better terrorists. You can't pull that shit off unless you're smart and have trained skills. It's a whole lot more complicated than just squeezing a trigger at anyone that's wearing a different kind of funny hat (or none at all). They have chemists, engineers, architects... it's like a government organization's evil twin, with all the same powers and none of the rules.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[dryeo]

Example: Menachem Begin, orchestrator of the bloodiest terrorist attack of the 20th century in King David Hotel in Jerusalem, with a death toll of around 90 people, men women and children both Jew and Muslim.

I think there were quite a few larger terrorist attacks in the 20th century. Air India flight 182 resulted in 329 deaths by itself (1985). Of course since it was mostly Canadians who died and was masterminded by Sikhs instead of Muslims it has been ignored by American media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182

Re:Don't miss the point.

[ksd1337]

Um, a terrorist's goal is to terrorize.
Often, people forget this.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[dtml-try MyNick]

No, he's winning because it WORKS.

I bet they aren't using Vista then ;-)

Re:Don't miss the point.

[number11]

Thugs are thugs. Terrorists are thugs with brains.

And the people* who attacked Iraq are thugs without brains?

I guess you could make a case for it.

____
*As in, "the people who sat safe at home and directed the attack", not as in, "the people who have to fight when they're told to." Although we've seen that some of the latter (Abu Gharib, Hamdania, Haditha) became thugs too.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[dave420]

What went wrong in Iraq? I don't think aggressiveness was the biggest mistake. Obviously being there itself was a massive mistake, but the largest mistake was disbanding the Iraqi army. All those guys suddenly out of work, seeing their country overrun by foreigners, with all that training, and all that spare time. Not to mention all those mouths to feed. They essentially did what a lot of US troops do when they leave the army - join a private military force. In the US it's Blackwater, in Iraq it's one of the many paramilitary organisations. Al Qaida is just one group of those organisations.

Terrorism does indeed work. The best way to defeat it is to not let it be the only course of action. Listen to the aggrieved parties, and see if their claims have any merit. If they do, fix them. If not, show the world, and them, just how wrong they are. Honesty and objectivity are the only weapons we know that can defeat, and have defeated, terrorism. It worked for the UK, it can work for anyone.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[wolf12886]

No offense, but comparing the kidnapping and killing of unrelated innocents to the bombing of an outwardly aggressive, war participating country that had been warned, and given the chance to surrender peacefully is pretty much the definition of pseudo-argument.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them en masse in hopes of demoralizing an enemy, have been normal features of muslim conquests everywhere.

Go evidence for that? Most historical texts I read talk about the tolerance of Muslims in the lands they aquired. And killing of women, children or elderly in war is directly forbidden, see this excrept from a hadith by prophet Muhammad(source):

"I advise you ten things: Do not kill women or children or an aged, infirm person. Do not cut down fruit-bearing trees. Do not destroy an inhabited place. Do not slaughter sheep or camels except for food. Do not burn bees and do not scatter them. Do not steal from the booty, and do not be cowardly."

when the muslim caliph ordered the library of alexandria burnt down

I doubt this. And multiple historians dismiss it as a hoax.Again, got evidence?

Re:Don't miss the point.

[billcopc]

Really ? Educated people are not violent, you say ?

Care to show us your unbiased research data ? If anything, an education gives you more information upon which to base your judgement of a person's worth. If you're chemically unbalanced (like me), that information can make you want to kill even more.

*licks lips* Golly, you sure have a pretty mouth.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[fugue]

Education in skills is not the same as education in critical thinking, philosophy, rhetoric, mindset. If we just nuked any country that allowed people who didn't have at least a master's degree to come into contact with religion, we'd be ok.

Um, let me check my notes...

Re:Don't miss the point.

[Kidbro]

He's winning because censorship always backfires.

No, he's winning because it WORKS. Are you seriously claiming the west censors the muslims more than the muslims censor the west ?

I'll just post a link to how "the economist" looks in a muslim nation :

http://jturn.qem.se/2006/more-pictures-of-iranian-censorship/

If you're going to post proof to support your point, I'd suggest posting stuff that actually... supports your point.

With the exception of the comics, every case of censorship mentioned on that page is on material of a "sexual" nature. Not a political one. It's even pointed out, explicitly, that articles extremely critical to the Iranian regime were left intact, while pictures of scantly clad women were blotted out.

I hardly see this type of censorship as one that works as a political tool to beguile the masses.

In all honesty, I see the same type of censorship everytime a Hip Hop song appears on MTV...

Re:Don't miss the point.

[poopdeville]

This is completely false. They all have a political aim, and use terror to achieve it.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

I wouldn't consider Timur Lenk a good example of a ruler following Islamic guidance. He was a warlord who attacked Muslims and non Muslims alike. For example he waged battles with the Mamluks and Ottomans.

I recommend you read more on him. Here are some quotes from that article:

Islam had first reached India in 711 [...] Just as the Muslim rulers of other regions were relatively tolerant of Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, the Muslim rulers of northern India were similarly tolerant of Hinduism, a religion which originated on the subcontinent, and to which the majority of Indians adhered.

Timur launched his attack on India in 1398, claiming that the Muslim Delhi Sultanate was too lenient towards its Hindu subjects. In reality, Timur probably cared more about looting this wealthy Muslim region than about punishing its religiously tolerant Muslim leaders.

As for source on Islamic tolerance, consider reading about Omar Ibn El Khattab or the well known fact that Christians and Jews lived in prosperity under Islamic rule in Spain.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Unfortunately their political aim is a religion. Their religion is not like Christianity, that explicitly leaves politics outside of it's scope, but a totalitarian ideology like nazism that leaves nothing (not eaven how people wipe their ass) out of it's scope. Every last millimeter of behavior is utterly regulated in this racist totalitarian and supremacist political ideology that intends to destroy human rights.

This political ideology is called "islam".

Re:Don't miss the point.

[lusiphur69]

muslim caliph ordered the library of alexandria burnt down

Whoa, whoa, whoa there. This is so out of line its not funny. The library of Alexandria was torched by Christians, during the period that it contained the wealth of knowledge of the ancient world, by the decree of Theophilus, prelate of Egypt. This is well proven by Gibbons in the Decline and Fall no matter how wikpedia may choose to present it's facts - conflating the decree of Theophilus with the conquest of the city by Caesar and the much later conquest by the Muslims. (because, you know, we can't have articles overly critical of Christianity or any other widespread superstition) Make no mistake - Theophilus had the books burned as they contained 'the fruits of idolatry' - he who detested paganism and went so far as to scourge Alexandria of any and all 'pagan' temples, which included the library. I detest all superstitions equally, yet no man of learning can attribute the destruction of that centre of knowledge to anyone but Theophilus and his zeal.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[Shakrai]

And killing of women, children or elderly in war is directly forbidden

Who cares if the Koran says that killing women and children in war is forbidden? I only care about actions -- and you can't deny that the Islamic terrorist types are killing women and children. Granted, we are killing them too ("collateral damage") so I'm not trying to pretend that we are perfect -- but I'm wondering why you even bothered to use that quote when nobody we are fighting actually lives up to that ideal?

Re:Don't miss the point.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Never let logic get in the way of a good "progressive" argument.

The muslims are VICTIMS I tell you ...

www.thereligionofpeace.com (this week : over 38 people killed by muslims in the name of allah ... it's monday ... last week over 350)

Glad there are people around here that are actually a bit smarter than average, who don't believe the muslim "victims" crap. Victims don't fire rockets on "opressors". It's the other way around.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[stewbacca]

When agents of the US government censor, torture and otherwise violate the US Constitution, enemies of the US can claim hypocrisy.

That's pretty bold calling Democrats "enemies"!

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

Who cares if the Koran says that killing women and children in war is forbidden? I only care about actions --

(I know it's beside your point, but the evidence I cited was from Hadith, not the Quran, and I'd rather not have the two confused!)

To answer your question,

1- I was replying to a poster who thought that "kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them [...] have been normal features of muslim conquests everywhere". It's much easier for both sides to communicate openly when the communication is based on reality.

2- Actions are always influenced by beliefs and ideas (just ask Fox News). Allowing the "Islam's inherently intolerant" meme to spread gives Neocons & friends the pretext to invade Muslim countries or intrude on their affairs and gives them the opportunity to spread fear mongering and erode the freedom inside their own countries. It also gives the terrorists an excuse to kill non-muslims while pretending they're following Islam and to gain sympathy from ignorant Muslims.

A little ironic but I think it's better for both sides that false information about Islam stops spreading.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[SenseiLeNoir]

Only one point, that particular act was condemned by majority of the Siekhs, who openly said that was NOT the means of their religion.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[Shakrai]

(I know it's beside your point, but the evidence I cited was from Hadith, not the Quran, and I'd rather not have the two confused!)

I realized that sometime after I hit submit, but alas /. doesn't give you the ability to go back and edit mistakes, so all I can do is apologize for my error.

A little ironic but I think it's better for both sides that false information about Islam stops spreading.

I would agree with that. But I think my point is still valid. I don't really care if the guy who killed me did so because his faith told him to or because of socioeconomic conditions that left him hopeless and despondent. I'm just as dead either way.

Time just had a very interesting article about suicide bombers. It was focused specifically on female suicide bombers but it still gives a pretty interesting look at what motivates them. Faith is an undeniable part of it. It might be a twisted reading of that faith but it's still there nonetheless.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[ksd1337]

Their religion is not like Christianity, that explicitly leaves politics outside of it's scope

Have you heard of Army of God? The Lambs of Christ? And if Christianity leaves politics outside of it's scope, then how come a disturbing majority of students from Regent University (a Christian university) were found to be hired by the Bush administration?

Re:Don't miss the point.

[cyberchondriac]

... how muslims fight : kidnapping kids, wives and old people and executing them en masse in hopes of demoralizing an enemy..

-- Hiroshima/Nagasaki anyone?--

The Japanese in those cities were kidnapped? And a ransom demanded? And it was paid, and then we did it anyway?? I think you missed half his point.
I won't attempt to "justify" Hiroshima/Nagasaki to you, but before you throw that argument around, you might want to check the historical context of those events, and the consequences of the alternatives. Additionally, in WWII, all sides were bombing enemy cities: Dresden, London, Conventry..etc.. the US was not some lone, rogue psycho-killer nation.
Your position seems to imply that the US is the progenitor of all conflict and violence in the modern world. I guess the Earth was a happy, peaceful, Utopia before the nasty ol' US of A came along.
The point being - the West did not create the Islamic terrorist mindset via abuses. It had already existed - for centuries.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

I don't really care if the guy who killed me did so because his faith told him to or because of socioeconomic conditions that left him hopeless and despondent. I'm just as dead either way.

I'm certainly not trying to defend the murderers who kill innocents in the name of religion. All life is sacred and cheapening the value of an innocent life is evil. In addition to that, those so called Muslims are more effective in ruining the Islamic world than 10 military invasions.

(Legitimate resistance against combatants of an occupying force is something else, however).

Time just had a very interesting article about suicide bombers [...] Faith is an undeniable part of it. It might be a twisted reading of that faith but it's still there nonetheless.

Unfortunately, all noble ideals can be twisted into means of control when ignorance is involved. Western politicians have effectively used democracy, security and concern for the children as excuses for totalitarianism and injustice (it pains me that in some discussions "think of the children" is used as a euphemism for reducing freedoms...etc).

I hope people don't conclude from that Islamic faith is the problem but look into the root cause. IMO problems should be attacked directly and if they were caused by ignorance or politics then they should be solved by education and justice, not by belief that weakening people's faith would somehow indirectly solve everything.

I think strong faith is a great thing. In the first few centuries of the Islamic state (when the Quran and Sunna were followed as precisely as possible) the Islamic world was a beacon of civilization and culture. It spread justice, tolerance and love of science and was one of the factors influencing European renaissance. I'd rather see Muslims revert to the those original ideals and have their strong faith become a catalyst for restoring justice and civilization in the region.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[Shakrai]

(Legitimate resistance against combatants of an occupying force is something else, however).

Against combatants yes. Driving a truck bomb into a US Marines barracks is a legitimate activity of resistance. Strapping explosives to your chest and walking into a pizzeria with the objective of killing as many civilians as possible is not, IMHO anyway. Many countries (including my own) have managed to obtain their independence without blowing up women and children.

I hope people don't conclude from that Islamic faith is the problem but look into the root cause

I don't think that Islam is the problem. I just wish people would stop using it as justification for their own political agendas. Christianity has much the same problem -- people who murder abortion doctors come to mind -- but Christian extremists haven't been able to inflict as much suffering on the World as Islamic ones have (in our generation that is), so they don't get as much attention.

As a random thought I've never understood why the Palestinians don't borrow some lessons from Gandhi or Mandela. Americans would certainly look at their struggle in a whole new light if they stopped bombing civilians and undertook a campaign of civil disobedience. As it stands right now all we see are people blowing up women and children -- and you can imagine how people react to images like those.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[GooberToo]

Education does not prevent terrorism

Actually, it does. This is why war is rare between democratic societies and common with Islamic societies. Most Islamic countries are not free and therefore are not allowed to develop educated, reasoned, and meaningful thought. Knowledge is only part of an education. By in large, people are only ever allowed part of an education in those parts of the world; wherein it fits within an Islamic doctrine, further convoluted with anti-western ideology. Most people will agree, that's still an incomplete education. Thusly, people can truthfully say many are uneducated despite having completed college.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[billcopc]

Poor, uneducated people are convicted for far more violent crimes than wealthy educated people.

There, fixed it for you.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

Against combatants yes.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Let's leave innocent civilians out of the whole thing.

Many countries (including my own) have managed to obtain their independence without blowing up women and children.

No, they do that only when invading Muslim countries :(

As a random thought I've never understood why the Palestinians don't borrow some lessons from Gandhi or Mandela.

Remember that violent resistance is relatively new to Palestinians. Their land was first occupied in 1948, and the first intifada was in 1989, 39 years later. And it was stone throwing, not bombing (which became known in the 90's).

In those years, the Palestinians and Arabs had endless negotiations, defending their case at the UN (and US/Israel blocking UN resolutions) and several wars/peace treaties. All while Israel was not being shy of oppressing Palestinians or killing their civilians, women or children. It's not like Palestinians didn't try every possible peaceful solution first.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

Fair enough, but then why are there no Muslims actively working against the militants? Where are they?

They do exist. Only the news media aren't interested in covering them, since (by their nature) they focus on problems like bombings...etc.

Muslims have condemned terrorism, Islamic scholars wrote article to show how killing of innocents is forbidden by the religion, and many Muslim journalists or individual Muslims wrote articles about the issues.
I don't know how you define "working against the militants" besides writing, speaking and calling against them. Are we expected to fight against terrorists? I mean they have machine guns and we have children to worry about. It's not like English people, say, have took in arms and got into combat with the IRA.

We're certainly not happy with militants. We were among their first victims. Egypt was a victim of terrorism in the 90's, way before the word had widespread use in the USA. People were genuinely scared and the terrorists didn't seem to leave anyone in peace. I remember a young Egyptian schoolgirl who died in 1993 from the explosion of a bomb intended to kill the Egyptian prime minister. My point is the issue of terrorism is much more complex than an "East vs. West" mentality that some people want everyone to believe.

[this] is not tolerance, it is barbarism.

Yes it is. And Islam is innocent of it.

Whenever Muslims followed Islam as defined by the Quran and Sunna, they showed mercy and kindness. And were forbidden to be cruel or injust.
I suggest your read this for some examples of this.

The act of some leader who happens to be a Muslim is far from an indicator of what Islam allows or forbids. People didn't assume the acts of the Nazis, the massacres committed by the Crusades or the Inquisition were representative of Christianity even though the transgressors were Christians and even some of them declared they committed their acts in the name of their religion. But when it comes to Islam some people assume Islam is really about murder or injustice because some leader of a Muslim country was a murderer. I think this is because Americans are Christian or live with Christians every day and know how normal Christians really behave while they hear nothing about Islam except from news...etc which mainly cover attacks or bombings.

I'm a Muslim and I live in the Muslim world, so my point of view is vastly different. I studied the Quran and Ahadith and see how Muslims act, what they think about terrorists and so on. The view from my side is very different :)

Re:Don't miss the point.

[XchristX]

Islam had first reached India in 711 [...] Just as the Muslim rulers of other regions were relatively tolerant of Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, the Muslim rulers of northern India were similarly tolerant of Hinduism, a religion which originated on the subcontinent, and to which the majority of Indians adhered.

It is as I said previously, and the other AC implied. The Politically correct cultural marxist academia routinely whitewashes history to make Muslims look good as part of their trotskyist campaign of creating a state of "Permanent Revolution" with the Muslims replacing the traditional role of the anti-bourgeoise in Communist atrocities. Read any work written without the political correctness and you will see that the Islamic dhimmification and subjugation of India was the worst genocide in history (Will Durant wrote in "The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage" that "The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800 AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by sword during this period." Also this http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/irin/genocide.html).

Also, Muslim records of the period, from Tarikh-i-Yamini, the Chach-nama, the Baburnama, the Maasir-i-Alamgiri (btw these are all mostly Persian, not Arabic, so you may not know of them) and others quite gleefully describe how "the blood of the infidels in al-hind (India) flowed like water as we (Muslims) tore them up like goats, praise be to Allah the honor He bestows upon Islam thus" (that's taken verbatim from the Tarikh-i-Yamini

The very notion that Muslims were "tolerant of Hindus" involves a ridiculous level of cognitive dissonance, given that Hindus are regarded as practising :Shirk" (polytheism) which is immediately punishable by mass death in Islam. Also, the Muslims were the primary agency responsible for the decline of Buddhism in South Asia. Muslim invaders (Persians mostly) called Buddhists "but-parast" (idol worshippers) and were thus subjected to the sword en masse. Afghanistan was predominantly Buddhist before Islamic hordes massacred them all.

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

(Are you the same AC who's been exchanging messages with me on a sibling thread? Your style is very similar to him but I'm not sure if this is a continuation of a conversation or a new one. It's hard keeping track on this stuff when I don't know who I'm talking to).

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

BTW by I intended "AC" to mean "anonymous poster" and wasn't criticizing your choice of not using an account. I hope my use of /. slang didn't give the wrong meaning :)

Re:Don't miss the point.

[free space]

Because they are a largely ineffectual minority among a vast aggressive mob of
Islamic majoritarianism

Got evidence for that?

They aren;t noteworthy enough to be covered in the media

  Perhaps they're not covered by western media, but in the Muslim world
I've seen journalists, Islamic scholars and thinkers, individual Muslims and TV personalities with
large fanbases all speak against terrorism and violence. Ask anyone in the region.

Whenever Muslims followed Islam as defined by the Quran and Sunna, they showed mercy and kindness

Which, even if we assume your argument to be valid, has been very rare in Islamic history.

No it hasn't. You're ignoring, among many examples, Omar Ibn El-Khattab's fair treatment of Chrisitnas and Jews, the Golden Age of Jews in Al-Andalus( after which the driving out of Muslims lead to the prosecution of jews in Spain), or the fact that the Ottoman empire provided a safe haven for Jews fleeting persecution.

For hundreds of years Islam was a beacon of tolerance and justice and yet you focus on isolated incidents by people who disobeyed to rules of their own religion and make these incidents look like a representative of the religion. And no, this isn't the NSM fallacy, since what a Muslim is allowed to do is defined by the Quran and Sunna, and not descided by someone's whimsy (as the fallacy requires).

given that Muhammad massacred 900 Jews of the Banu Qurayza and Banu Nadir tribes

Check your facts. Banu Al-Nudair weren't "massacred" but simply exiled after they betrayed their pact with the Muslims and attempted to assasinate prophet Muhammad. As for Banu Quraiza, they made an alliance with Arab tribes and intended to wipe out the Muslims during the battle of "Al-Khandaq" and the Muslims retailiated. Again it wasn't a "massacre" but a battle among other battles.

.and why should we accept that from you, a random user on the internet

Please re-read my post all my posts and replies in this article. I've given examples and cited multiple sources including Hadith, Islamic sites, personal sites of individual Muslims and sites by non-Muslims. In all cases you either ignored my evidence or dismissed them with unverified accusations of bias.

On the other hand, you seem to be more interested in piling accusations than supporting them. However confident you are of your position neither of us is above having to provide evidence. And whenever I reply to you, you seem to ignore my replies and either repeat your attacks or come up with new ones.

And your main point seems to repeat, over and over and over, how some Muslims at some place killed non-Muslims, ignoring the fact that those people violated the rules of Islam (as told by the Quran and Hadith, not simply the opinion of some individual Muslim) or the possibility of any other factors at work like poverty, ignorance, tribalism or political conditions.

Also, I think we're going too offtopic in this discussion. If you want, we can continue this discussion by email and discuss the issue in whatever level of detail you like. my email (encoded in rot13 to avoid spam) is fnzl2004@tznvy.pbz

Re:Don't miss the point.

[hjrnunes]

Man, do not underestimate me. I'm European. My country has its borders defined for 800 years. Believe me, if there are people who know about war, conflict and violence it's Europeans. I don't need you to justify for the atomic bombs your country deployed. I think I know pretty well why. Now, about terrorism, the West didn't create islamic terrorism? What exactly is islamic terrorism? What makes it different from irish, basque, or colombian terrorism? The motivation? Open your eyes. Terrorism is warfare. It's pretty much the warfare I would expect my enemy to practice if he had no money, weapons, organization, etc to form a "classical" army or guerrilla, but was determined to fight. If the USA should give as much money to Palestine as it gives to Israel, maybe the palestinians wouldn't send only rocks and hand-made joke-rockets to Israeli tanks...

Building upon assumptions is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

So we are fairly certain there exists such a thing as an Al-Qaeda network?

Or are they just ideas? So what this is saying is that people with certain ideas have access to all the stuff that people with opposing ideas have.

Moral uncertainty sure is scary!

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit, is "it's from a reputable source" accepted as a valid argument these days?

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[jfsimard79]

/tin foil hat It just seems that they pull stuff out of their arses and report on it. What we are implying is that Al-Qaeda might not be what we are told it is... */

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[something_wicked_thi]

I wonder if a law about handing over your keys could be invalidated based on the fifth amendment if it came to a legal trial. It seems to violate the bit about not having to bear witness against oneself.

Freedom protects freedom

[mlwmohawk]

The more I see this stuff the more I remember a philosophical point my history teacher told me once. In the revolutionary period, the "news papers" were far more attacking and had far more offensive rumors and accusations.

Now we see freedom being abused to spread "their" propaganda better than "our" propaganda. Whether or not we have the monopoly of truth is debatable. However, we are in a fight here and the *only* way to win a war of ideas is the freedom of expression of these ideas and hope that your ideas win.

As an american, I'm not sure our ideals, as currently practiced, will win. We have to do a better job of things. Al Qaeda is only winning the war of ideals because we, the western world, have turned its back on democracy and society in favor of raw and savage unregulated capitalism which is destroying our economies and an aggressive preemptive war strategy designed to suppress any dissent in foreign nations which is emptying our treasury.

Suppressing information is not a way to win the hearts and minds of people, especially while we are doing such a bad job living up to our ideals.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[h4rm0ny]

I personally would like to see some of these videos and in particular the Q&A session that the Al-Quaeda leader held. But not speaking Arabic, I probably wouldn't be able to find a copy I understand, even if I knew where to start looking for this material. If the propaganda is that impossible to stop, anyone know where I can find it? It's always interesting to understand where people are coming from.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[jez9999]

As an american, I'm not sure our ideals, as currently practiced, will win.

And you wonder why the US government wants to suppress freedom.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[zappepcs]

You make a good point, I would like to see more commentary that reflections the position that you take whilst at the same time acknowledging the risk and threat that we do face.

Agreed!

Like a disease, the threat of Islamic Fundamentalism will not go away, and if left to fester it will cause bigger problems for generations to come. This means we need to be continuously proactive about many things including our freedom of expression.

Don't you mean: Like a disease, the threat of Fundamentalism will not go away, ...... Why pick on Islam? Fundamentalists of all flavors are absolutely ready to destroy the world to see their end game religious prophecy come true. As far as I can tell, religious fundamentalists are ALL bat shit crazy idiots with weapons. Scary stuff.

Having said that, this article is empty. So "they" use free encryption software and the internet to commnicate, ok, I think I guessed that myself.

It's not that the article is empty, it's using empty rhetoric to insinuate that AQ (?) is using sophisticated technology to fight their enemies. Oh noes, they are not a stupid bunch of idiots with rifles. OMG, they know about the Inernets!

Simply put, it's fear mongering.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[h4rm0ny]

search information like that is a very bad idea, even if you are only a nerd you will be screened as terrorist in US goverment databases, and probably end in gitmo.

I don't accept government censorship. If this country (I am in the UK) is to be democratic, then the people of the country must be able to make their own judgements on what is said, not trust the government shown to have lied in these areas before to tell you what is said and what it means whilst hiding the source from you.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[zappepcs]

Just a thought: Christian fundamentalism is seen as you describe for one reason; it is forced to live side by side with people of reason and has not yet been allowed to infuse the governments with it's dangerous agenda. Should America and other Western societies fail to prevent that from happening, it will be just as dangerous. It is subdued by rule of law, not benign and harmless. Any thought otherwise is hubris. The Christian/biblical principle of an eye for an eye is how warlords escalate their acrimony to a point beyond control and reason.

Don't tell me I take that passage out of context until you can demonstrate that Christians don't.

Hatred is hatred. Remember, fundamentalist Christians already believe that all Muslims want to kill them, and would do so with the blessings of their religion.

Terrorists are criminals and all that separates them from bank robbers is the fact that they have a religious agenda as well and not just simple greed.

The world would be a better place if all the lawyers were hung with the guts of all the clerics. It is at least a good start.... so they say. I'm not convinced it would be such a bad idea.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[mikael]

www.wikileaks.org, www.infowars.net, www.liveleak.com?

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[a_real_bast...]

Get Torpark, the completely idiot-proof way to get onto the Tor network. While you have to have a high conspiracy-theory tolerance, you'll find information on the .onion sites. Just use your own judgement on its reliability.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[a_real_bast...]

Christianity and Islam are fundamentally different religions.

Would you like to prop up your unfounded declaration, or should I just knock it down now?

The same laws apply to Muslims, but that doesn't stop them from doing whatever the hell they feel like doing."

Has the US Supreme Court declared Muslims unprosecutable, and the whole internet (bar you, of course) missed it? Or are you implying an entire religion, with 20% of the world's population as members, have no conscience?
Or have I completely misunderstood you? Possibly, I'm not at my sharpest at the moment. So apologies if I've slandered you. I hope I have, I really do.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[abstract daddy]

No, I'm afraid they're not fundamentalist Christians.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[abstract daddy]

Would you like to prop up your unfounded declaration, or should I just knock it down now?

Yes, because a website built entirely on theory, wishful thinking and historical revisionism is surely enough to disprove the day-to-day reality of terrorism, honor killings, religious supremacism, intolerance, oppression and mindless rage.

Has the US Supreme Court declared Muslims unprosecutable, and the whole internet (bar you, of course) missed it? Or are you implying an entire religion, with 20% of the world's population as members, have no conscience? Or have I completely misunderstood you? Possibly, I'm not at my sharpest at the moment. So apologies if I've slandered you. I hope I have, I really do.

I have no idea how this is even related to what you're replying to.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[a_real_bast...]

1:
You claimed Islam and Christianity are entirely different religions. That's what I replied to. If you meant to say "cultures," that's a different argument. That's fine. But please use your turn signals when changing course. ",)
2:

The same laws apply to Muslims, but that doesn't stop them from doing whatever the hell they feel like doing.

That was what you said. I couldn't see how, why, where, or when it was true. I may have been a little overblown in my response. Melodrama as a way to provoke debate, I suppose. Would you care to elaborate on your original statement?

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[a_real_bast...]

You can't see how, why, where or when Muslims have to follow the same laws as everyone else?

That method of debating doesn't work on the internet; we can read back previous posts. (",) I meant I can't see how "Muslims do whatever the hell they feel like doing," as you asserted. Apologies if it was unclear, though I can't see how. Is English your first language? If there's a misphrasing in what I said, please, point it out. I'm convinced my ability with "human" languages is atrophying daily; perhaps you'll find the proof.
Anyway: I asked, quite politely I thought, for you to provide a fuller argument to support that assertion. It's hard to debate unsupported declarations, as it's difficult not to believe they're not personal assumptions, which generally moves us straight to the "flame war" section of the evening's entertainment. (",) Religion vs. culture: religion is the reason for the hijab, culture for female circumcision. It does matter. Plus, condemning a culture can be fairly narrow, whereas condemning "Islam" (in reality, two separate religions, plus a separate mystical tradition) demonises 20% of the population of the world.

Re:Freedom protects freedom

[a_real_bast...]

Godwin's law. We're done here.
Pity; I was quite enjoying myself.

Al Qaida = CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Blowback.

HAIL RED ARMY IN AFGHANISTAN! Extend the gains of the October socialist revolution to the peoples of Afghanistan!

The Trotskyists were right.

Re:Al Qaida = CIA

[leoofborg]

1980: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

2000: The enemy of my enemy of my enemy is... my enemy.

Politicians should take up, like, basically Boolean logic, y'know?

valid critique

[Gary W. Longsine]

Uhm... are we supposed to think that a dismissive wave of the hand "by fictionpuss (1136565)" is a valid critique?

Re:valid critique

[MrNaz]

So asking for proof before buying into a scare campaign into which our tax dollars are being spent at an unprecedented rate is being dismissive? You, sir, represent the political apathy among the masses that allows government to get away with what it does.

Re:valid critique

[something_wicked_thi]

To quote XKCD, "Did that man just go crazy and jump out the window?"

Seriously, what are you talking about?

The Washington Post, I can expect, at least checked its facts. They also cited references. If you read through them, you'll see that Al-Qaeda does indeed have an Internet-based propaganda machine and that they were staging Q&A sessions.

In fact, the article sounds critical of the US, saying that we're getting our asses kicked because of incompetence. That ought to be pretty good Slashdot material.

Also, the article seems to suggest that the US is not trying anything heavy handed. In fact, it just seems like a piece on how they release their videos and what (little) the US is doing about it.

Perhaps if the government were proposing some infringement of my rights in this article, or if there were something that seems absurd, or even out of the ordinary, you might, maybe have a point. In this case, though, I have no reason to doubt its validity, and I certainly didn't come away from it thinking I should let the government curtail some of my rights.

Re:valid critique

[MrNaz]

You're right. I, too, have a propaganda machine, as well as encryption and other scary things. I.e., I have a blog up at www.mrnaz.com and I use SSH from time to time.

Scary.

The article is suggesting that the US is getting their asses kicked not because that's actually what's happening, but becuase telling US citizens that that is what is happening will cause them to clamor for more tax dollars to be spent making rich defense industry shareholders even richer.

Re: Not trying anything heavy handed? Are you freaking nuts? The most expensive military campaign in HISTORY is not heavy handed?

As for proposing rights infringement, are you really that naive that it has to happen *in the same article*? So If you see one article scaring you about "terrorists using encryption" and then another about how police need to have more and more power to probe your private life, you're unable to put 2 and 2 together?

I have no words.

Re:valid critique

[something_wicked_thi]

I give up. You win. Of course, I was referring to the entire war and every article about it when I was responding to someone who asked for proof about this particular article. I also am sure that all communications originating from Al-Queda are in no way propaganda material. And clearly, when I said nothing heavy handed was going on, I couldn't have been referring to this article. I must have been referring to everything the US has done in its history.

I was wrong. I apologize. I will never do it again.

Re:valid critique

[fictionpuss]

Of course, I was referring to the entire war and every article about it when I was responding to someone who asked for proof about this particular article.

Well maybe I wasn't clear enough, but the whole "yawn... next" phraseology was intended to address this article as the latest in a series rather than an atomic item, separate from all other instances of media and abuse-of-truth contexts.

As you say, the reporting and subject matter in this piece (as a single item devoid of any context) is not controversial.

Re:valid critique

[something_wicked_thi]

Then I demand proof of collusion. :-)

Re:valid critique

[fictionpuss]

Then I demand proof of collusion. :-)

:-) It's not required for group action.

Re:valid critique

[budgenator]

Americans are people who think two hundred years is a long time;
Europeans are people who think 200 mile is a long distance;
Arabs are people who think 1000 years is only short time and have had trade routes spanning continents for millennia.

Re:valid critique

[Richard W.M. Jones]

In this case, though, I have no reason to doubt its validity, and I certainly didn't come away from it thinking I should let the government curtail some of my rights.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance though. The fact that Al Qaeda is using the internet and tools such as PGP is also being used (certainly in Europe) to justify banning "hacking" tools and pervasive monitoring of the internet. We as technical people can see that neither of these actions will do anything to prevent the original problem, but there are companies out there lobbying so that they can sell the "security" infrastructure into governments, and politians are notoriously clueless about technology.

Rich.

Re:valid critique

[mikael]

They better ban Sony Vaio laptops as well by that reasoning :)

Re:valid critique

[ady1]

You summed it all up better than anyone in the entire discussion could.

This is nothing but a cry for how xxx technology is being used by xxx group (pirates/terrorists) and therefore, the technology is bad.

Re:valid critique

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

And yet here they are, riding around on camels and porking their close relatives. Maybe they should have swapped their cultural longevity for a drop of intelligence.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[canUbeleiveIT]

Proof that it is something I should be overly concerned about.

Who is asking you to be overly concerned about it?

Proof that this isn't some prelude to removing the rights of ordinary citizens to use encryption, or to demand they give up their keys to the Government upon request, as in the UK. Proof that the propaganda I should be worrying about is the one from abroad, and not the harder-to-detect propaganda that comes from a reputable source.

1) How would one prove these?
2) Where is that mentioned in the article or summary?

Nothing is as easy as cheap skepticism.

Censorship is bad, OK?

[myCopyWrong]

It is surprising that the Washington Post would run editorial against free press as a news article.

"In many, many ways, the damage has already been done," said Evan F. Kohlmann, an expert on al-Qaeda's online operations who serves as a consultant to the FBI, Scotland Yard and other agencies. "It certainly would have been a lot easier if the U.S. government had taken this seriously back in 2004. Back then, these guys were looked upon as miscreants and cretins, like they were just Internet terrorists and not for real."

This is flabbergasting. Does the US stand for democracy and freedom of speech or is it a place where you can't get Al-Jazeera on cable TV? When you step over the lines of disrupting military communications into full blown censorship, you become the oppressor.

The disproportionate use of force is obvious because it's aimed at you. Domestic spying aims at identifying and disrupting communications deemed unfavorable to US interests as defined by GWB and corporate interests. The idea is to keep any opposition disorganized, despised and ineffective. If you want to know how far it goes, have a look at Fox News "mistakes" about the democratic presidential candidate, Osama Barak.

Re:Censorship is bad, OK?

[Curtman]

Does the US stand for democracy and freedom of speech

That's awesome buddy. I'll still be chuckling about that one tomorrow. Thanks man.

Re:Censorship is bad, OK?

[myCopyWrong]

When Evan F. Kohlmann, an expert on al-Qaeda's online operations who serves as a consultant to the FBI, Scotland Yard and other agencies, equates publication with terror I think it's safe to assume that others in the US Government have made the same association and acted on it.

Foxattacks has video you can watch for yourself about Barack, but this is only one example. There are many others as you say. It is strange that you would attack the truth of such things by saying they are true.

Re:Censorship is bad, OK?

[Angostura]

It is surprising that the Washington Post would run editorial against free press as a news article.

.

Absolutely. Such articles should be banned immediately.

Re:Censorship is bad, OK?

[Snuhwolf]

Its not an argument against "free press". If you actually RTFA you'd see it was an article detailing the extent to which Al-quaida has evolved tecnologically speaking. The content of the web forums etc is unquestionably "kill all infidels". In case you didnt know, you're an infidel.
HTH

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Usama Bin Laden to the US is the same as Emmanuel Goldberg is to Orwell's 1984. 'Two Minutes Hate' anyone?

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[canUbeleiveIT]

It just seems that they pull stuff out of their arses and report on it.

It seems to me to be an interesting, reasonable article...sources, attributes and all of that. It doesn't even seem to me to have an alarmist tone. Is it earth-shattering news? No, but I guess I don't see what they pulled "out of their arses."

What we are implying is that Al-Qaeda might not be what we are told it is...

Very possibly. But, if I just wanted to be a skeptical little shit, I could always just quote the parent and reply, "Yawn. Proof please. Next."

Not hacking!

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt they have brigades set aside for finding clever solutions to a non-obvious problem, Please, they are cracking, not hacking...

Re:Not hacking!

[rikkards]

Sorry you lost that war 10 years ago.

Re:Not hacking!

[Oktober Sunset]

no, totaly wrong, they are hacking, thier non oblivious problem is, how do a bunch of scruffy funamentalist crazys hide from the worlds most powerful nations, and they clearly have a clever solution, because they still haven't been caught.

Which Al-Qaeda?

[Swampash]

I'm confused. Is this new decentralised online digital five-nines 256-symmetric multimedia Al Qaeda the same bunch of guys who are starving, cut off from support, and cowering in fear for their lives in caves?

Just wondering.

Re:Which Al-Qaeda?

[budgenator]

yeah, any army type will tell you, getting the to you gear is easy, it's a one time deal it's the beans and bullets that kill you, food and water have to be constantly replaced. Besides I've heard some of those caves are set up to be a pretty cumfy place to cower

Re:Which Al-Qaeda?

[Elky Elk]

No, the new guys are Al Qaeda 2.0

Re:Which Al-Qaeda?

[craagz]

decentralized means not all of them are living together in caves. Some of them might be living next door to you. Maybe the one in the cave is sending messages to the next door fellow using internets and pgp.

Re:Anyone could prove

[MrNaz]

You know, it may not be FUD. Imagine if Al-Qaeda and Anonymous joined forces! Then we'd be truly fucked. Their tagline would be: "Taking down the West for Epic Lulz"

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[fictionpuss]

Who is asking you to be overly concerned about it?

Then why is it news?

This just in - terrorists don't leave their passwords on post-it notes underneath their keyboards.

1) How would one prove these?

That's not my problem. I am not the governmental apparatus which has been heading in those directions.

Simply I'm laying down why I am skeptical.

2) Where is that mentioned in the article or summary?

It isn't - these are my extrapolations.

Nothing is as easy as cheap skepticism.

No - inaction is far easier - we, the citizenry, have been recently far too guilty of that however.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[nospam007]

They're using Sony stuff, so they can't be dangerous.

Partly an ad for PGP?

[Futurepower(R)]

Proof that it isn't partly an ad for PGP, when GPG is available.

Do people who don't agree with the policies of the U.S. government really buy their encryption software online, using their credit cards? From a company in Menlo Park, California?

Shouldn't all encryption software be open source? Otherwise, how do you know it is secure? Maybe an unhappy employee built in a back door.

Oh, and TrueCrypt encrypts entire hard drives, including the boot partition.

The mention of political enemies of the U.S. government using closed-source software from a U.S. company makes me wonder about the entire article. Quote from the article: "Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software that is also used by intelligence agencies around the world."

I'm VERY doubtful about that. The U.S. government, under the present administration, has established that it can require companies to cooperate, and to keep the cooperation secret. That means that any U.S.-made product could be suspect. That's one of the unintended consequences of being sneaky.

Re:Partly an ad for PGP?

[Oktober Sunset]

Do people who don't agree with the policies of the U.S. government really buy their encryption software online, using their credit cards? From a company in Menlo Park, California?

Nope, they warez it like the rest of us.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[value_added]

The dubious bit is that warning lights go off in my head every time someone mentions Al-Qaeda because usually it's someone trying to scare me for political reasons.

Normally I do the same, but the article specifically mentions al-Qaeda by name (not "the terrists", "insurgents", "extremists" or "evil-doers"), refers to the "tribal areas of western Pakistan" and accurately characterises those areas as "ungoverned" (no ambiguous "war on terrorism" angle), and then refrains from drawing unwarranted conclusions about what may or may not be going in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

I'd say that's a trifecta.

Just as importantly, using the fear card (as was done for Iraq) is a no op. Pakistan already has a nuclear program, is and will continue to be an ally, the political and social realities there are so complex that no one would dare try to make talking points out of them for news media, and the US military would prefer to stay out of such inaccessible regions altogether. And then, of course, there's no oil.

As for the possibility that this will draw additional attention to the subject of encryption on the part of the administration, or lawmakers in general, I don't see that happening except, perhaps, at the periphery. The use of encryption is as commonlace as it is widespread. That means the issue, if there is one, involves everyone from big business to the military to ordinary folks checking their email.

Re:Bullshit [Well duh..]

[leoofborg]

Bearing in mind that Windoze scares 95% of the population, of *course* you need scary PR pieces like this from the hacks at the Washington Post.

We also need pieces like this to justify the 'security theater' that is the TSA [aka 'Thousands Standing Around'].. as well as the funding needed to train our shiny new USAF 'Cyberspace Force' that stands 'Over All'... *sigh*, well they had to do something with all those 'Missile Techs' now that they don't have any silos to man.

That's it. Teach'em DOS and VISTA.

Oh. One more thing. Make the TSA's job easy.

Fly naked.

Eat beans.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[Weaselmancer]

The dubious bit is that warning lights go off in my head every time someone mentions Al-Qaeda because usually it's someone trying to scare me for political reasons.

Yup, and the next question to ask is what are they trying to scare you away from?

The answer in this case is privacy. Al-Qaeda uses PGP! They'd like people to link those two things together if possible. If you're obeying the law you have nothing to hide! And so on.

Re:brxndxn GOT PWNED

[brxndxn]

9/11 was 7 years, two clusterfuck wars, and $1trillion ago.. And it still was not in my back yard.

Oh Please...

[sieb]

A Sony Vaio is all of a sudden "the best technology available"?? I'm pretty sure they aren't using Red 4k cameras either.. Sounds more like a propaganda piece against P2P networks and open source encryption solutions. And please, replace Al-Qaeda with "Fundamentalist Group" like it should be. I'm still under the impression that Al-Qaeda is a CIA construct..

"online offensive"

[imipak]

The implication of this phrase is that AQ are hacking into banks and stealing funds, or attacking military (or indeed civilian) targets over the net in a, well, "terroristic manner". Collapsing banks, disrupting the military, crashing CNI (critical national infrastructure) and so on. Which is patently false.

No doubt they do have some IT and media-literate people, but so what? That's not an "online offensive" except in the metaphorical sense of "offensive" that Pepsi would use about their forthcoming marketing campaign. (campaign, another military word coopted by marketing types.)

Nothing to see here etc etc.

Re:"online offensive"

[PhxBlue]

Never underestimate the value of an information campaign. Google "Tet Offensive" if you don't believe me.

Munir Ladaa & nefafoundation.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but I don't trust any Foundation created to prevent terrorism that appear to be manufactured propaganda groups. So a story from Munir Ladaa who reports from them, is not a trusted source and I'm reduced to checking my own internal bullshitomitter.

How many people in tribal areas of Pakistan use the internet to get their news, and how many of those would know about this guys blog? None.

How would this Egyptian wannabe terrywrist know that this blog exists, that the answers truely respresent that mans opinion and that by visiting that blog he isn't giving his identity away? None.

Ergo my bullshitomitter tells me I am being fed a line.

Mission Accomplished

[Doc Ruby]

To fight the Qaeda we must suspend the Constitution, take off our shoes and surrender our toothpaste getting on airplanes, invade Iraq (but not Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but maybe Iran), pay $5 a gallon for gas. Rich people must pay no taxes, but everyone else must maximize oilcorp, pharmaco, telco, and bank profits, and hand Social Security and Medicare over to Wall Street. Free 12MPG Hummers for everyone with a credit rating, and subprime mortgages for everyone without one! Because that's the American Way that the terrorists hate us for.

I feel safer already.

Re:Mission Accomplished

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation 0
    50% Troll
    30% Funny
    20% Insightful

Is this the fate of Republicans? Now in the minority, their legacy of catastrophe making their insane, cowardly bleatings nothing but the butt of jokes or cautionary tales, they merely anonymously snipe at the truth about their Reign of Error.

Re:Mission Accomplished

[DeanFox]

All that and the President isn't even interested in Bin Laden. There's a video of him in a news conference saying just that, a couple times in fact. It's good picture where Bush stands...

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him...

Al-Queda's propaganda machine

[nightfire-unique]

Is totally outgunned.. :)

Outlaw PGP, Freenet, Tor, etc.

[mattwarden]

Uh oh. PGP is a terrorist tool. We better outlaw it!!! Or at least investigate anyone who uses it.

Distributed content networks are a terrorist tool. We better spend money counteracting such activity!!!

Looks like someone's been paying attention.

Re:Outlaw PGP, Freenet, Tor, etc.

[myspace-cn]

EXACTLY, I wish I could mod you up.

This is just a propaganda attack on encryption, and potentially the web. If they (anonymous) know so much detailed damned information about AQ, then they should just go take them fuck out.

The only thing this will do is saber rattle in the form of even more civil rights taken away from American Citizens. Watch as some fuck head authors some new bill to fuck the internet. And like FISA they will try to wait until you are watching that shiny object on the corporate media, introduce it on a Friday just before they break.

Remember it's the birth of our nation right now. However actually while we celebrate the birth, the senators are going to vote on it's death after recess, by destroying the 4th Amendment, passing the unconstitutional FISA.

If FISA is passed (you have called your Senators?!), the internet will be their next target. And I ain't talking about Al Queda, I am talking about this corrupt fucking administration.

The cost of the 2nd Amendment was ALL THE REST of the Constitution

Re:Outlaw PGP, Freenet, Tor, etc.

[Etcetera]

Uh oh. PGP is a terrorist tool. We better outlaw it!!! Or at least investigate anyone who uses it.

Distributed content networks are a terrorist tool. We better spend money counteracting such activity!!!

Looks like someone's been paying attention.

Yes, they are terrorist tools. Of course, so are shovels. The crime is in how they're being used, not necessarily the technology itself.

That being said, when export laws (presuming they were effective) were reduced this was a "known possibility"... that the Bad Guys were going to get access to the encryption tech and make it harder for the Good Guys (that's us) to track them down. The tech industry/open-source/software-wants-to-be-free movement, collectively, needs to understand, accept, and acknowledge that.

The price for idealism is paid in realism dollars, FYI.

Or an ad for Sony?

[mangu]

Isn't it funny how TFA mentions that "producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops and top-end video cameras"? I wonder why the make and model of the cameras aren't mentioned. They got close enough to know which laptops those guys use, but have no idea of where they are hiding...

Re:Or an ad for Sony?

[couchslug]

And we thought "product placement" was only for the movies. :)

Re:Or an ad for Sony?

[craagz]

because, Sony paid Washington News (for sponsorship) but maybe the video camera producer did not pay up so they excluded their names. :)

top of the line video cameras?

[heitikender]

.. how come all those prisoner-killing videos and other videoblogs they sent out are with such a crappy quality?

Re:top of the line video cameras?

[the brown guy]

you obviously don't get access to any of the HD videos, that's for brown people only.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[fictionpuss]

if I just wanted to be a skeptical little shit, I could always just quote the parent and reply, "Yawn. Proof please. Next."

Any time Al-Qaeda is mentioned, it is to sell copy or to push an agenda. Preferably both.

When rights and statutes are being trampled upon all over the world with no proof that what we are giving up is worth less of that which we sacrifice, it is the duty of the populace to question their governance and its mouth, the media, in all its forms.

If that makes me a skeptical little shit, then so be it.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[jfsimard79]

OK you win. I was being an ass. It's good to be prepared for any attack.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[pilsner.urquell]

It's beautifully crafted propaganda, and it's a huge problem for
us,"That is how I would characterize this article!

bull

[Alibaba10100]

If you needed proof that the experts behind this story don't know what they're talking about, here it is:

Analysts said that as-Sahab(AQ's propaganda network) is outfitted with some of the best technology available. Editors and producers use ultralight Sony Vaio laptops

Typical newspaper tech reporting. I wonder if any of these "analysts" has ever used a Sony laptop.

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Absolute Rubbish

[Karem Lore]

I am sorry, I can not believe this utter rubbish. The US and UK governments can shutdown international bank accounts, can trace mobile phones, phones, internet connections. They can track the electricity usage of areas, they can use electro magnetic weaponry to take out computers, they can use heat source signature to identify target computers. In other words, if they use computer attached equipment, they know where you are and what you do. This story stinks, and so does the current US administration.

Karem

Re:Absolute Rubbish

[craagz]

wat if the operatives are using computers from a cyber cafe? US UK can't bomb a public place or take out the computers

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[account_deleted]

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Common toolsets, similar to TPB even!

[billcopc]

What irks me about this article is not the technical content itself, it's the power of association that has been at the heart of this conflict from the very beginning.

Planes were crashed, and someone with weakly-diversified chromosomes indicated the Iraqi terrorists hated us, so we blamed them.

We were "at war" with "Iraq", so anyone who might look even a tiny bit middle-eastern was assumed to be a terrorist, and that was dumb.

Now we believe they use common network failover tactics and widely-used encryption software to protect their network, things that several thousand North American network engineers do on a daily basis, but the laypeople will think these are "terrorist tools".

Be warned, I'm biased here, and I'm personally concerned about the use of such finger-pointing tactics against The Pirate Bay, who are well known for employing the same techniques to ensure their uptime and continue to deliver their anti-copyright message, which the right-wingers consider a threat - to the common pureblood, that makes copyright offenders strangely similar to Iraqi terrorists. I'm talking about the same people who coined the term "freedom fries".

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[drpimp]

Reputable source? Hmmm... I don't see the green bar.

There is no al qaeda

[DragonTHC]

it's faceless monster created to give us a common enemy.

it doesn't exist.

Re: There is no al qaeda

[ceka]

It doesn't exist, but from a point of view of any terrorist it sounds like a cool idea to join forces with others, and you can do that by calling yourself AQ... So in some sense it is the US creating it not only as a faceless enemy but also as a physical treat.

Re:Bin Laden advocates Linux to all his buds !!

[flnca]

ROFL!!

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[canUbeleiveIT]

Any time Al-Qaeda is mentioned, it is to sell copy or to push an agenda. Preferably both.

That's an awfully broad brush for such a little fellow. No matter what you believe about Al-Qaeda, they have had quite an impact upon a great number of people worldwide. It's hard to fathom how you think that all news articles about them are somehow invalid or tainted.

When rights and statutes are being trampled upon all over the world with no proof that what we are giving up is worth less of that which we sacrifice, it is the duty of the populace to question their governance and its mouth, the media, in all its forms.

I agree with that, however, when you come down off of your high horse and read the article, you might find that there is no advocacy of giving up rights in the article.

If that makes me a skeptical little shit, then so be it.

No, what makes you a skeptical little shit is that you glibly dismissed a perfectly competent news article for absolutely no good reason.

Easy Target

[b4upoo]

Isn't it nice that the enemy has invested in electronics. One good ebomb and everything electronic will come to a screeching, permanent halt. Let's all hope that they invest their last penny in electronics. There is no easier military target. Ebombs won't kill people and will not hurt buildings and the like.

Re: Easy Target

[dave420]

Until they figure out what a faraday cage is :)

Re: Easy Target

[Joe The Dragon]

Just a EMP bomb.

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[account_deleted]

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Mission Accomplished

[fictionpuss]

Nice work on the ad hominems. If I appear glib, it's because I do have a wider agenda of helping to defuse the ability of fear to bludgeon rationality into submission - towards that end I do think I've succeeded in this case.

And to borrow a mentality from recent American foreign policy - if a few innocent articles get in the way, then that's acceptable collateral damage.

When we live in an age where fear of terrorism is not used to push forward political agenda, then maybe yes, we will be able to have a 'sensible' conversation about Al-Qaeda without doubting the motives of the stakeholders.

"propaganda boom"...blah blah blah....

[KozmoKramer]

"U.S. and European intelligence officials attribute the al-Qaeda propaganda boom in part to the network's ability to establish a secure base in the ungoverned tribal areas of western Pakistan."


Or maybe their "propaganda boom" can be attributed to all of the press coverage of terrorists who kill relatively fewer westerners every year than the annual flu virus does. Then again, WTF do I know....

OMFG - Qaeda acts like a government at war....

[OldHawk777]

WOW or BFD China, Microsoft, Russia, Dell, Iran, SCO ... are always doing the same shit to US, EU ....

Presently the US, EU ... corporatist are techno-failures on infrastructure/Internet security, sub-cult propaganda, web-world attacks ....

Presently internal US, EU ... corporatist propaganda falls into two dysfunctional categories (1) Supporting for profit, not patriotism, the largely proprietary military industrial complex (Halliburton, General Dynamics, Boeing ...) justifies all cost with perhaps performance surprises, and (2) when in doubt frequently shout it out (Puppet OTUS Bush, Witless Whip Cheney, and Candy Rice).

Maybe the CIA, FBI, corporatist, plutocrats ... should hire some G-Qaeda geeks for classes on techno-propaganda and how to fight and win global asymmetric propaganda-war. They already hired some as field/finance agents a few years ago ...; HOLDIT, that may of been the KGB with Chechen agents ... DAMN, I am never sure any more. Life and world affairs were so much better and simpler with the cold-war and the single threat of global nuclear annihilation ...: HOLDIT, I think, that was Mutually Assured Destruction MAD, but now MAD is Moms Against Drunks in the USA and Moms' Adulterous Drunks in Russia ... DAMN, I could be wrong again ....

"Muslims burned Alex. library" hoax

[free space]

Here's more evidence against the "Muslims burned the library of Alexandria" myth.

Re:"Muslims burned Alex. library" hoax

[free space]

Dude, it's not easy to go into a fruitful conversation with you when you're accusing every opinion you don't accept with "Islamofacism", Saudi lobbying and so on.

And bringing an unrelated edit from wikipedia doesn't prove that the article I referred to is wrong, especially that my referenced article cites several sources including books by Alfred J. Butler and Lewis Bernard, who are hardly the victims of influence by Muslims.

I concede that the Milligazette might not have been the best source to cite. Here's another article from a Christian web site stating, again, that the story of Muslims burning the library is dismissed as a legend.

and erased all records of pre-Islamic Arab culture (regarded by Muslims as "Jahillya")

It's funny thay you mentioned "Jahillya". I'm an Arab and I learned a lot of Jahilia poetry at school including the Mu'allaqat, for example, which were collections of some of the best Arabic poetry before Islam. And their full text was preserved, along with much of the Arabic culture of the time.

I can receite to you some lines of them if you want :)

(yeah, I know, I linked to wikipedia again but their text references a public domain edition of Encyclopedia Britannica this time, you can check it yourself).

Re:"Muslims burned Alex. library" hoax

[free space]

I'm not sure how to reply to you when every source I cite is assumed to be either affected by some Islamic organization or afraid of them. If our influence is so pervasive then how is everyone attacking/invading us? You'd think western public opinion would agree with everything Islamic in that case.

About where I learned Arabic poetry from pre-Islamic times, it was in a normal Egyptian public school. As far as I know, most Arab countries teach comparable material. We understood
that not everything in these poems is in agreement with Islamic principles and yet these poems had linguistic importance so we studied them. I don't know why you assume that Muslim are trying to erase pre-Islamic history when it's well recorded and even taught in schools of Arab countries.

It seems that you have a lot of negative opinions of Islam. Perhaps the sources you learned about it from focused too much on negative events, or you had bad experiences with Muslims in India/Pakistan...etc (seems to be the main source of your examples).

In both cases, there's a difference between Islam as defined by the Quran and Sunna, and the acts of current or historical individual Muslims who may not necessarily follow Islamic rules.

I'm not happy either with people who arbitrarily lie, oppress or kill people (both non-Muslims and other Muslims) and justify their crimes on Islam. As I said in another post, anyone who commits some crime and says "My faith guided me to do it!" is a worse threat to Islam than any outside military threat on us.

Re:"Muslims burned Alex. library" hoax

[free space]

Looks to me like it is Muslims who are attacking non-Islamic lands in droves.

From my point of view, I see Muslims detained without basic rights, the veil prohibited in western countries even when Muslim women declare it's their own choice, and ongoing pressure to stop building mosques. So how again are Muslims in control of anything as you seem to imply? How could Christians be afraid of Muslims as you said when the new Pope publicly attacked Islam in his "Roman emperor Manuel II" speech?

As for the Archbishop of Canterbury, from what I understood he didn't call for a total acceptance of sharia law but he considered allowing non-Christians (Muslims or otherwise) to appeal to their religious laws in cases of personal matters that relate to religion like marriage and divorce. I don't think that's necessarily wrong and a similar system has already been applied to Christians for decades here in Egypt.

About the various crimes you seem to be attributing to Islam instead of individual motives, it would take too long to provide evidence that Islam rules against them all so I'll cite two examples: Here's Islam's stance against honor killing and rape.

As shown by the second link, the 'hadd' (singular of the huddood you mentioned) is deterrent punishment and the total opposite of "giving rapists a medal" that you mentioned.

and that leads to the classic "No true Scotsman" logical fallacy.

Please see the second part of your linked article about misapplication of the NTS fallacy: The "no true Scotsman" fallacy applies only when the definition of the proverbial "Scotsman" is vague or always changing. But the way a Muslim should act isn't like that, the Quran and Ahadith have been preserved for hundreds of years and they define strictly what a Muslim is and isn't allowed to do. I think it's kind of unfair to blame Islam for the acts of people when these specific actionswent against its explicit rules. You yourself have cited some reasons for Muslims not strictly following Islam like ignorance and desire for political control. I think we should solve the root cause of the problems instead of assuming that the problems will suddenly go away if Islam was removed. Teaching the Quran and Sunna to those people could actually solve the problem.

The only way by which you can reconcile all this with the claim that Islam teaches peace and love and hippie "cumbaya" ** is if you regard some 75% of the world's Muslims as "false Muslims" (takfir?)

** BTW, let's not confuse kindness and justice as promoted by Islam with hippie stuff, please :)

It's not my position to say who is a Muslim and who's a non-muslim, but a person doesn't need to be a disbeliever or kafir to violate the rules of Islam.

A person who believes in God, prays...etc but still commits sins and disobeys God could be a "Muslim 'aasi" or a disobedient Muslim. And yes a very large number of the people in the Islamic world are like that. Every time a person violates a rule from Islam he commits a "ma'seya" and determining if he's still a Muslim or not depends on the nature of the ma'seya, his intent, whether he stopped committing it and repented or not, and other factors.

My point is that a large number of current Muslims could be committing ma'seya and violating the rules of Islam each day, and it's wrong to say that "Islam allows X" because some Muslim somewhere did it.

Come listen to a Friday lecture in an Egyptian mosque some time. You'll probably hear the sheikh lament how so many Muslims have strayed away from the ruling of Islam and freely do acts that Allah forbade.

Finally, I think that this conversation might be g

Re:"Muslims burned Alex. library" hoax

[free space]

From my point of view, I see Muslims detained without basic rights.

More Muslims have done that to each other than "Kaffir-Harbis" or whoever

For starters, two wrongs don't make a right.Also by asking "where's my outrage" you seem to imply that I somehow find that acceptable, I don't!
As for how could Muslims do this, we already had a long discussion about acts of Muslims vs. what Islam allows and disallows :)

Anyway, my aim here wasn't criticising American detainment per se but simply noting that reality is not conformant with your belief that America is somehow under Saudi/Muslim control when more than 100 Saudis were forcefully detained. I shouldn't really need to bring evidence that Muslims are harassed anyway. Should be obvious :(

the Hijab/Naqab/Burqua is a symbol of oppression of women and fundamentally incompatible with modernity

Says who? I personally know female doctors, teachers and programmers who are muhajabat or munaqabat. Interestingly, in the colledge I worked in, it seemed to me that the vieled female students tended to score more in exams and be better programmers than the non-veiled, who seemed more interested in superficial things. Of course this is my personal observation and this isn't always the case but it shows there's no conflict between hijab and modernity. I'm sure you can find similar examples in other places/countries.

Muslim women declare it's their own choice,

Now that, is nonsense

You mean that no Muslim woman declares that (which is wrong, they even filed lawsuits to defend their right to wear hijab) or you mean that even if they declared that hijab is their choice they're wrong and should be forced to take it off?
Now here's the problem: the western world allows things that are scientifically proven as harmful like alcohol or smoking all in the name of freedom, yet they want to ban consenting adult women from an activity because it's perceived symbolically harmful by non-Muslims. Now that's hypocricy.

and ongoing pressure to stop building mosques.

Where?

Germany and Italy, for starters. I could probably find more examples in several European countries if I look hard enough.

Besides, attacking religion is entirely acceptable in modern discourse in the modern world.

Again, I wasn't specifically criticising the Pope's attack on Islam (he has a right to say what he wants) but providing a counterexample to your claim that Christians are somehow afraid of Muslims. In hindsight, I didn't really need an example, it's enough to be aware of the news in the past months to see that no one seems to respect Muslims at all (let alone fear them as you claim).

As to why Muslims seem to care a lot for not having their religion insulted, it's because they seem to be among the last people who actually care about the position of religion in their lives, Al-Hamdulillah. Everyone else seems to have more or less abandoned it so the jokes/insults to their religion don't really matter to them.

Christians/Jews who do care about their religion would probably take offence in the insults you mentioned as well.

Re:Fuck Al-Qaeda

[pandrijeczko]

How's this for a better idea?

Maybe if I ask Slashdot nicely, they'll take a look through their posting logs and reveal your IP address or even you Slashdot account details (if you have one).

Then, unable to cower behind your AC status, you will shit yourself for fear of being exposed and the need for toilet paper will thus be negated as your underpants will have served the purpose.

Oh, and before you ask, I don't follow any organised religions - but if some other people do, then I'm tolerant enough to let them get on with it and not try to incite the same type of religious hatred that obviously seems to give you & few other extremists their jollies.

this news brought to you by Perpetual War Inc.

[MRe_nl]

Some analysts, such as Noam Chomsky, posit that a state of perpetual war is an aid to (and is promoted by) the powerful members of dominant political and economic classes, helping maintain their positions of economic and political superiority.

Some have also suggested that entering a state of perpetual war becomes progressively easier in a modern democratic republic such as the United States due to the continuing development of interlocking relationships between those who benefit directly from war and the large and powerful companies that indirectly benefit and shape the presentation of the effects and consequences of war (i.e., the formation of a military-industrial complex).

There has been some criticism from anti-war activists and Bush critics, for example, that the Bush administration's ties to Halliburton influenced the decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. These claims have been pointedly denied by the George W. Bush White House.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Don't miss the point: WEAKNESS is the enemy.

[kklein]

Yes.

I was against the Iraq War from day one because it was not a war where we could win AND be the good guys.

Here's the thing about war:

It's not like in the movies. It's not a heroic clash of noble men. It is crawling in the bloody filth and tearing each other's eyes out. That's war.

How do you win a war?

Kill. Kill and kill and kill and kill and kill. Kill until there is no more fight left in the enemy. Kill until their sense of community is destroyed. Kill until they have no reason to go on. Kill until they break.

How do you wage a war on a country, while trying to save the country? In order to win a war, you have to kill a lot of people. But what if those are the people you are (ostensibly) trying to save? Even if they want to be saved, they aren't going to take kindly to being killed, and the people you are trying to save will become the people you are fighting.

Since we weren't interested in a war with the Iraqi people, it was an impossible war. If we really had wanted to defeat Iraq, you're right, we had to be a lot more aggressive. We needed a lot more people. We needed to have 2 GIs on every street corner of every burg in the nation, just making sure nothing happens.

Japan (where I live) is better off now than it was living under the Emperor cult. Germany is better off now than it was under Hitler. But in both of these cases, we had to wage war on the people. No government can stand without the people. If you have a problem with a government, you have a problem with the people. And the way to solve people problems, when push comes to shove, is to get rid of the people (i.e. Stalin was right). If you can't or don't want to do that, you shouldn't go to war. You will never win.

This is what happened in Vietnam; this is what has happened in Iraq.

A lot of Japanese people were sick of the war. A lot of people knew the government was off its rocker. A lot of the people in the government tried to stop the military (and found themselves dead). But no one greeted the Yanks as liberators after they melted two cities of civilians. They just realized that it was surrender or lose their homeland forever.

There's another huge difference between Germany/Japan and Iraq, though: Germany and Japan were civilized countries with a sense of national identity. After the war, no one had to convince them that they were all Germans or all Japanese. Not true in Iraq. They have no national identity; they have religious identity. Sunni, Shi'ite, or Christian. That's their identity. And they don't like living together.

So when you take the psychotic tyrant out of the picture, you find that he was the only thing holding the country together. And pretty soon, you have to become the psychotic tyrant, or these people will kill each other and you. But to do so is to violate everything you stand for and does irreparable damage to your reputation and your soul. So what do you do? It's too late to go back.

I suggest you just let them kill each other. Let them kill and kill and kill. Kill each other until a "winner" emerges. Then maybe they can get along with each other.

Terrorism is the weapon of an enemy who can't kill and kill and kill, so they look for other ways of breaking the enemy. I submit to you that 9/11 broke us. 3000 people and the USA and Britain imploded. Confused as to whom to fight, they have decided to fight their own people. We lost.

The Israelis deal with terrorism properly: They go on with their lives. They rebuild; they go back to work. They don't torture. They don't let go of their ideals. As you say, the body count isn't what a terrorist goes for. It's the demoralization. But the weakness of that kind of attack is that you have the ability to control your own demoralization.

The correct response to 9/11 (after the utter destruction of the Bin Laden training camps no later than 9/12--why did we wait months?), I think, was voiced by Jer

$5000 reward for genuine al-qaeda propaganda!

[ClarisseMcClellan]

This has been the best story on /. in ages. It does not seem that everyone is standing shoulder to shoulder on the al-qaeda story - do al-qaeda exist or don't they exist?
With a real enemy it is possible to verify if the propaganda is genuine. Some simple questions just need to be asked:

1. When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?
2. Where was it produced (localization)?
3. By whom was it produced (authorship)?
4. From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
5. In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
6. What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?

To date most if not all al-qaeda videos get dropped off in London, into the hands of the journalist Yosri Fouda. He does not work in the al-jazeera London studio, he has his own seperate office in the Westminster area, a short walk from the MI5/MI6 offices. Yosri Fouda never says where he gets his tapes from, claiming the usual journalist privelige to hide sources. If the UK/USA alliance really wanted to catch the bogeyman then they would just have to watch back the CCTV pictures and track the guy that hands in the tapes.

During the presentation that Colin Powell made to the U.N. he claimed that there was a new UBL tape at al-jazeera. The only problem was that al-jazeera had not received the tape yet. I guess that Yosri Fouda must have been off that day.

To my knowledge all of the post 9/11 al-qaeda nonsense has came from this one source. This is the normal chain of custody - IntelCenter -> Yosri Fouda -> al-jazeera -> MSM -> ./(!)
Infer this: if there was no Yosri Fouda there would be no UBL videos, therefore no al-qaeda.

My offer, open to anyone on /. is to provide al-qaeda material that is the real stuff, not made up rubbish. I am genuinely interested in that, hence the reward. Clearly I could just say 'that's made up mate' and not pay up, but that's not the way we do things on /. - we are gentlemen here, right?

Now, as for the original article, I see problems on the first line. Abu Hamza. Is he al-qaeda? I don't think so, however, that is implied as he would have to know the secret URL for 'As-Sahab Media'. Let's Google 'Abu Hamza' with the 'I'm feeling lucky!' button. The article returned is from the BBC, let's see if he is merely a hater or the real deal:

"According to Abu Hamza himself, MI5 first contacted him in 1997 shortly after extremists massacred 68 tourists at Luxor, Egypt.

These meetings continued for some years, he told the Old Bailey, and included a warning that he was "walking a tightrope".

---

On 20 January 2003, police raided the building as part of a major investigation into an alleged plot to produce ricin poison. They sealed the mosque and handed it back to the trustees.

Abu Hamza himself was not arrested in connection with that probe. But despite being denied a base, he preached outside its gates every Friday.

This bizarre stand-off between Abu Hamza and the authorities continued into 2004. Then, Washington named Abu Hamza as a "terrorist facilitator with a global reach" and he was arrested pending extradition."

Well, the ricin plot never was. The UK security services were sent on that wild goose chase by former Home Office head 'Blunkett'. Hamza exists (he spent the time whilst locked out of his mosque feeding the ducks in Finsbury Park) yet at the same time the security services see him as "terrorist facilitator with a global reach".

Call me naive but the alleged enemy should have a website for their 'As-Sahab Media', complete with the 1888 questions posed by journalists and 'jihadists'. Where is it, or did I miss something?

For reasons beyond the scope of this comment I believe that 'The War Against Terrorism' (T.W.A.T. - let's stick to the correct acronyms) is running a lot hotter than anyone on /. are capable of imagining. We are relatively close to the seventh anniversary and the propaganda offensive ('W's) is being ratcheted up. There is the dreaded building seven report coming out very soon and 'W' wants to nab UBL before leaving office.

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[sgt_doom]

"...reputable source...."

Now where have we heard that before? Might it be George Bush (author of the soon-to-be-published: Tales from the Bush Family Torture Chamber)? Could it be Robert Gates (author of the forthcoming cookbook: Fifty Ways to Boil a Cat)? Or Donald Rumsfeld (author of the forthcoming self-help book: What You Don't Know You Don't Know and Who Knows What You Don't Know?)? Or possibly Dick Cheney (author of the forthcoming article in Guns & Ammo: Shooting Lawyers on the Sly)?

Well, they should have a bunch of money with all those billions shipped to the Pakistani government. Then there's that $75 million - "accidentally" handed over last summer to a militia chief who turned out to be one of five actual Al Qaeda types in Iraq.

Or maybe they purchased that stuff with some of those billions that went missing in Iraq ($30 billion at last count)...

Hmmmm...maybe it's from the Iraqi treasury, which now, much to their chagrin, now resides in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and also JP Morgan Chase......

library of alexandria destroyed by muslims?!

[majid_aldo]

here's a quick fact check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Destruction_of_the_Library

Re:I'd trust Al-Qaeda before the Washington Post

[toddhisattva]

You are able to tell the difference between al-Qaeda and the Washington Post?

Years ago, that would have worked; Not anymore

[WindBourne]

The reason is that the Saudi's have befriended China. The chinese gov. is more than happy to support any gov that helps them (though many could argue that is what we are doing). For example, China was all to happy to send arms to Mugabe in Zimbabwae. Fortunately, that was stopped by South Africa, once it was exposed.

Within 5 years, our imports from OPEC is going to drop dramatically. This will be due to both Algae oil/gasoline( of which several companies are moving into small scale production) as well as our moving to electrical transportation (in particular, if EESTOR is for real). At that time, China MAY step in and support the house.

Stupid moderation system

[Cynic.AU]

This moderation system is imperfect - I just wish I could moderate this higher than 5. : ) : ) ; )

I think it's BS.

[elucido]

It's from a reputable source. Besides, there's nothing really strange about this. The idea of using PGP and decentralized servers makes perfect sense. The dubious bit is that warning lights go off in my head every time someone mentions Al-Qaeda because usually it's someone trying to scare me for political reasons.

I'm sure Al Qaeda are running Microsoft Windows.

I don't see why we don't just break in through the back door and spy on them.

Am I supposed to believe that some guys living in caves somewhere in the middle east are more tech saavy than the average college educated American?

And how tech saavy can they be to be using Sony laptops?! If they knew their shit they'd have used Macs with Linux, or IBM, but SONY?

And so what? they use PGP? sure it's impossible for civilians to crack PGP,maybe even difficult or impossible for the NSA, but you don't have to crack PGP to deal with Al Qaeda, all we have to do is wait for them to connect to the internet and drop the bomb on them while they are uploading their Bin Laden video.

What happened to tempest? UAV's? I'm skeptical. I think this is just being used for political reasons as a way to crack down further on internet freedom in the same way kiddie porn is used.

If we want to catch Al Qaeda, hire some hackers to hack their computers, this is slashdot, some of the people here would gladly hack into their Sony computers, for a fee of course.

He's winning because our strategy was dumb

[elucido]

It's not that Bin Laden is kicking our ass,we are kicking our own ass with our ridiculous laws.

While we are buying wiretapping ourselves, the terrorists roam free and get on the internet without any wiretap whatsoever.

While we are busy attacking our own people, the terrorists are attacking us. It's ridiculous.

All the US government has to do is set a billion dollars aside,and them maybe give slashdot 50 million dollars to distribute to people who can hack into the Al Qaeda Sony laptop systems.

Within a few months most of them will be hacked into.

You can't win a war on terrorism by killing terror

[elucido]

You can only win a war on terrorism by disabling terrorist cells and changing the behavior and thinking patterns of the individuals in leadership positions.

I don't buy the idea that terrorists are the best hackers in the world.They probably do use PGP, they probably do know about computers, but chances are they run Windows, and run commercial closed source software with backdoors in it.

Even if they run Linux it doesn't mean their passwords can't be cracked to their webservers.

I hope when we have a new President that our foreign policy and the way we fight wars changes so that victory is the goal and not just killing as many of the enemy as possible.

With no privacy or security at home how can we win

[elucido]

How can we win a war on terror abroad if we have no security or privacy at home?

Some of our policies don't make any sense at all.

Encryption and privacy helps us fight the terror.

[elucido]

I don't see how we can be safe from terrorists when terrorists can have access to all our medical records, our financial history, our identity, and basically track our every move.

Yeah we are supposed to win a war against terrorists who have more privacy and security than we do?

PGP is good. Privacy is good. The reason PGP and privacy is good is because you can't have security without privacy, and without security you can't have liberty, and without liberty then the terrorists win, because what else is worth fighting for besides freedom?

You can't put all your faith in the police.The terrorists can become police officers and then access satelite data, and listen to your cellphone calls, even have you put on some watch list.

Somehow people think that terrorists who were smart enough to learn how to fly planes,wont be smart enough to go through the police academy, get a gun license, and then become police chiefs and from that position ask for your file.

They aren't stupid. And because they aren't stupid, I don't feel safer than before 911, I feel less safe. I don't feel safer with all this wiretapping,I feel less safe,because I don't know who the wiretappers are or what their agendas are, we don't get a list of names of who they are but they know who we are.

How could you fight terror without encryption?

[elucido]

I mean honestly it doesn't make any sense how anyone could be against encryption yet expect to win any kinda war.

Encryption is essential to fighting the war on terror.How can you build an anonymous tip line so people can report on the terrorists if you have no encryption?

No encryption means no one would come forward. And if no one can come forward then you have no way to track Bin Laden down.

It's ridiculous

[elucido]

The way the article makes it seem, it's as if the only people who want to use PGP or TrueCrypt or have security and privacy are the terrorists and thats completely backwards.

If the goal is to protect the American citizen from the terrorist then the American citizen should be using PGP and Truecrypt and the government should be telling citizens to use encryption.

Now,as far as corporations cooperating, that always happens and thats not really the problem.

The problem is that governments expect citizens to support them in a war, but then the government wants to outlaw everything the citizen would need to feel safe. Citizens are scared of terrorists so they try to buy a gun, but guns are banned.

The citizen is afraid of hacker terrorists so they try to get PGP and the government bans encryption?!

The terrorists are going to win because the average citizen does not give a damn about security.

Something is very wrong.

[Futurepower(R)]

"They got close enough to know which laptops those guys use..."

Something like, "I live in Virginia and I don't speak Arabic, but I hang around with top terrorists all the time, heh, heh."

Re:Anyone could prove

[RiotingPacifist]

Redundant? this post is the most insightful post ive seen in this story! seriously al-quaeda are not an organisation or company in the conventional sense of the word.
1)There's a bunch of people who make fairly good rants about how the west is fucking with the middle east,...AND then goes on to say the only solution is to kill them all!
2)people listen to this and think he has a point then they go blow shit up

terrorist training camps? give me a break you don't need training to make a bomb and blow yourself up. hell if they were trained don't you think they would be better at it (blowing up a bus outside a medical centre means there are a lot of doctors around)

there is nothing more than a few religious conversion camps, not too different from catholic summer camps I went to as a kid only they teach the extremist ideology that agrees with 1 to 2.

Al-Quaeda are not a huge powerful multinational organisation
Al-Quaeda do not have a huge secret mountain complex
Al-Quaeda is not the Taliban
Al-Quadea is not the Shia/Sunni militia in Iraq
Al-Quadea is not the Iranian government

Re:Editors-of-Evil

[Shakrai]

She commented on how friendly and welcoming the people were there, and that she did not feel threatened at any time.

The people aren't the problem. The people are rarely the problem. The Government is the problem. The people have actually tried to change it through the Democratic process -- and the Mullahs overrode them and forbade the opposition parties from being on the ballot.

Anyone whom thinks the Iranian people are the problem hasn't looked very deeply at the situation.

Re:Don't miss the point: WEAKNESS is the enemy.

[stewbacca]

How do you wage a war on a country, while trying to save the country?

That's the problem in Iraq (as with Vietnam). Using the Army as nation-builders is flawed. The Army exists to kill people and blow stuff up.

And yet, still no current videos of Osama

[ravenshrike]

Definitely a grease spot in a cave somewhere.

DOS Attack?

[funehmon]

Seems like with all of the brain power on this damned site, we could just put these propaganda sites out of commission pretty simply.

Suuuuuuuuuure it's secure.

[stewbacca]

Files are protected using PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, a virtually unbreakable form of encryption software

Please, please, please, please keep telling yourselves that...

Re:Don't miss the point: WEAKNESS is the enemy.

[tonekids]

I'm sorry I don't have any insightful mod points to give you. This is an excellent piece, and I couldn't agree more with you.

Correct conclusion, incorrect reasoning

[querist]

I believe that your conclusion is correct, but for entirely the wrong reason.

These "analysts" believe that they are smarter than the majority of the population, which is why their opinions (a.k.a. "analyses") are valuable and they are paid to provide them.

Since they are (supposedly) so smart, they should know what is best.

I strongly suspect, in contradiction to your implication, that they all use Sony Vaios. Since they're so smart, they obviously picked the best technology, and if they use Sony Vaios, then anyone else using a Sony Vaio is clearly using the "best technology available".

So, I suspect it would be clear to the Slashdot crowd that these "analysts" know very little about technology, but for the opposite reason that you have cited.

Re:brxndxn GOT PWNED

[AioKits]

Careful, they might use that as proof that it's 'working'. Gotta find out who 'they' are...